Sure. I’ll compare what I perceive to be the differences between wedrifid now and, say, < 100 karma wedrifid. The difference in reception was more apparent given that wedrifid didn’t have the steep learning curve associated with learning a new micro-culture.
Comprehension. Comments by young wedrifid were less likely comprehended than comments of approximately equal quality now. Not understanding people is a signal of high status. It obliges the lower status people to spend effort to second guess your way of thinking and adapt towards your preferred set of concepts in order to communicate with you. This signalling appears to run deeper than an outward display. Higher status people at times seem actually unable to comprehend things that would otherwise be in their grasp, often to their own detriment.
Rebuttal. People were more likely to reply with retorts to upstart-wedrifid and, more significantly, provided less or lower quality reasons when doing so. This is to be expected less from high status people and more from people with more moderate status who would like to raise it. (There isn’t much point going one up if you have to reach 3 down in order to do so.) I get less replies now that I consider to be absolutely idiotic. Again, I don’t think that is just because people generate inane nonsense then decide whether or not to post it by whether they recipient is a newbie or for some reason other reason an easy target (eg. out-of-group or currently being scapegoated). I think the calibration of carefulness is built in to the rebuttal generation system.
Of course, I don’t know how much of my perception is just me seeing what I expect to see: normal social behaviour. I also don’t think this effect would be sufficient to overshadow a top level post by a renamed Yvain or Eliezer. I would probably just wonder who this amazing new poster was. I still remember Yvain catching me by surprise with that burst of brilliant posting in LessWrong’s early weeks. Those seem to be received no worse than Eliezer’s would have been if he were still posting regularly. Although come to think of it I may have rejected Wei_Dai’s probability posts if I hadn’t seen the quality of his other contributions. They are confusing enough topics that I needed to take a while to absorb them before they made sense. Of course, maybe I would have been convinced anyway while trying to write a rebuttal to Renamed_Wei_Dai and realising that he was absolutely right.
I am intrigued somewhat by snarles’ other suggestion, the posts by top contributors that are flat out wrong. My dark side wants to suggest that maybe that is the explanation that those anthropic reasoning posts are examples of this! (Of course, a somewhat wiser side of myself reminds me that it is conceivable that I am confused, not Eliezer.)
Aye, and I’ll say it again just to be sure. If I want to say something that’s not true, I write a story and put it in the mouth of a fictional character.
Could you elaborate?
Sure. I’ll compare what I perceive to be the differences between wedrifid now and, say, < 100 karma wedrifid. The difference in reception was more apparent given that wedrifid didn’t have the steep learning curve associated with learning a new micro-culture.
Comprehension. Comments by young wedrifid were less likely comprehended than comments of approximately equal quality now. Not understanding people is a signal of high status. It obliges the lower status people to spend effort to second guess your way of thinking and adapt towards your preferred set of concepts in order to communicate with you. This signalling appears to run deeper than an outward display. Higher status people at times seem actually unable to comprehend things that would otherwise be in their grasp, often to their own detriment.
Rebuttal. People were more likely to reply with retorts to upstart-wedrifid and, more significantly, provided less or lower quality reasons when doing so. This is to be expected less from high status people and more from people with more moderate status who would like to raise it. (There isn’t much point going one up if you have to reach 3 down in order to do so.) I get less replies now that I consider to be absolutely idiotic. Again, I don’t think that is just because people generate inane nonsense then decide whether or not to post it by whether they recipient is a newbie or for some reason other reason an easy target (eg. out-of-group or currently being scapegoated). I think the calibration of carefulness is built in to the rebuttal generation system.
Of course, I don’t know how much of my perception is just me seeing what I expect to see: normal social behaviour. I also don’t think this effect would be sufficient to overshadow a top level post by a renamed Yvain or Eliezer. I would probably just wonder who this amazing new poster was. I still remember Yvain catching me by surprise with that burst of brilliant posting in LessWrong’s early weeks. Those seem to be received no worse than Eliezer’s would have been if he were still posting regularly. Although come to think of it I may have rejected Wei_Dai’s probability posts if I hadn’t seen the quality of his other contributions. They are confusing enough topics that I needed to take a while to absorb them before they made sense. Of course, maybe I would have been convinced anyway while trying to write a rebuttal to Renamed_Wei_Dai and realising that he was absolutely right.
I am intrigued somewhat by snarles’ other suggestion, the posts by top contributors that are flat out wrong. My dark side wants to suggest that maybe that is the explanation that those anthropic reasoning posts are examples of this! (Of course, a somewhat wiser side of myself reminds me that it is conceivable that I am confused, not Eliezer.)
Eliezer has made it explicit on several occasions that he never does this. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad idea, but he doesn’t do it.
Aye, and I’ll say it again just to be sure. If I want to say something that’s not true, I write a story and put it in the mouth of a fictional character.