After Eliezer posted the comment in question, the votes on the EAF version of the Omnizoid post swung pretty dramatically, which I take as evidence that my interpretation of the comment’s intended purpose is more likely than Zack’s, and that the comment was successful in that purpose.
It seems to me that the exact opposite is true: such a vote swing is evidence against your characterization of the situation as “an attempt to explain to the upvoters of the Omnizoid post why they erred in upvoting it, and to help them avoid making similar mistakes in the future”, and for the characterization as “attempting to enforce a rule” (i.e., clearly the attempt was successful).
Eliezer’s comment introduces no new information or arguments (as his object-level rebuttals, while perfectly correct, are nothing new, and merely restate previously written things; nor was anything new needed, of course, the accusing post having contained no arguments valid or coherent enough to require such). So it seems unlikely that anyone was convinced that they had erred, after reading Eliezer’s reply, and consequently changed their vote. Much more likely that people were responding to the post, and the comment, as entries in a conflict, and were rallied to support Eliezer’s side after he came out to support himself.
There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but it’s a case of rule enforcement, not persuasion.
I disagree, but this seems like something that could be settled with an anonymous survey of EAF readers more easily than via argument. There would probably be some issues with response bias, and you would have to trust EAF readers to accurately recall and report their voting patterns and voting reasons. But even for a biased or flawed survey, we could agree on a methodology and bet on the predicted results beforehand as a way of settling the disagreement.
I personally won’t take this on because the point seems pretty low stakes to me either way, but if someone else decides to, please create a Manifold market before conducting any surveys. The market description should include a description of the survey and proposed sampling method, as well as a disclaimer asking market participants not to take the survey themselves.
No comment on the rest for now, but:
It seems to me that the exact opposite is true: such a vote swing is evidence against your characterization of the situation as “an attempt to explain to the upvoters of the Omnizoid post why they erred in upvoting it, and to help them avoid making similar mistakes in the future”, and for the characterization as “attempting to enforce a rule” (i.e., clearly the attempt was successful).
Eliezer’s comment introduces no new information or arguments (as his object-level rebuttals, while perfectly correct, are nothing new, and merely restate previously written things; nor was anything new needed, of course, the accusing post having contained no arguments valid or coherent enough to require such). So it seems unlikely that anyone was convinced that they had erred, after reading Eliezer’s reply, and consequently changed their vote. Much more likely that people were responding to the post, and the comment, as entries in a conflict, and were rallied to support Eliezer’s side after he came out to support himself.
There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but it’s a case of rule enforcement, not persuasion.
I disagree, but this seems like something that could be settled with an anonymous survey of EAF readers more easily than via argument. There would probably be some issues with response bias, and you would have to trust EAF readers to accurately recall and report their voting patterns and voting reasons. But even for a biased or flawed survey, we could agree on a methodology and bet on the predicted results beforehand as a way of settling the disagreement.
I personally won’t take this on because the point seems pretty low stakes to me either way, but if someone else decides to, please create a Manifold market before conducting any surveys. The market description should include a description of the survey and proposed sampling method, as well as a disclaimer asking market participants not to take the survey themselves.