IMO, the quality of comments on Overcoming Bias has diminished significantly since Less Wrong started up. This was true almost from the beginning, but the situation has really spiraled out of control more recently.
I gave up reading the comments regularly last year, but once a week or so, I peek at the comments and they are atrociously bad (and almost uniformly negative). The great majority seem unwilling to even engage with Robin Hanson’s arguments and instead rely on shaming techniques.
So what gives? Why is the comment quality so much higher on LW than on OB? My first thought is karma, but OB didn’t have karma when Eliezer Yudkowsky was posting, and the comments were pretty good back then. My best guess is that the good commenters were mostly Yudkowsky fans, and they left when EY left.
However, I don’t know if anyone else shares my impression about OB commenter quality, so I may be completely misguided here.
I wasn’t reading OB before LW existed, but if you look there now, it’s immediately apparent that the topics represented on the front page are much, much, much more interesting to the average casual reader than the ones on LW’s front page. I wouldn’t be surprised if the commenters tended to be less invested and less focused as a result.
(EDIT: I shouldn’t say the “average casual reader,” since that must mean something different to everyone. I clarified what I meant below in response to katydee; I think OB appeals to a large audience of interested laymen who like accessible, smart writing on a variety of topics, but who aren’t very interested in a lot of LW’s denser and more academic discussion.)
I suppose I’m not the average casual reader, but here’s my comparison--
Less Wrong front page: -Occam efficiency/rationality games—low interest -Strategies for confronting existential risk—high interest -Potential biases in evolutionary psychology—mid-level interest -Taking ideas seriously—extremely high interest -Various community threads—low/mid interest -Quick explanations of rationality techniques—extremely high interest -Conflicts within the mind—mid/high interest
Overcoming Bias front page: -Personality trait effects on romantic relationships—minimal interest -Status and reproduction—minimal interest -Flaws with medicine- mid-level interest -False virginity—no interest beyond “it exists” -(In)efficiency of free parking—minimal interest -Strategies for influencing the future—high interest -Reproductive ethics—minimal interest -Economic debate—minimal interest
Only two of the Overcoming Bias articles were interesting to me at all; only one was strongly interesting, and it was also short. Less Wrong seemed, at least to me, to have better/more interesting topics than Overcoming Bias, which might be why it has better/more interesting discussions.
But personally, I know a lot of fairly smart, moderately well-educated people who just aren’t very interested in a life of the mind. They don’t get a lot out of studying philosophy and math, they read a little but not a lot, they don’t seek intellectual self-improvement, and they aren’t terribly introspective. However, they all have a passing interest in current events, technology, economics, and social issues; the stuff you’d find in the New Yorker or Harper’s, or on news aggregators. Hanson’s writing on these topics is exactly the sort of thing that appeals to that demographic, whereas Less Wrong is just not.
Hanson’s writing on these topics is exactly the sort of thing that appeals to that demographic, whereas Less Wrong is just not.
I certainly find Hanson’s anecdotes far more useful when socialising with people that have interested in hearing surprising stories about human behaviour (ie. most of the people I bother socialising with). The ability to drop sound bites is, after all, the primary purpose of keeping ‘informed’ in general.
I remember there being lots of bad comments on the old OB, and I think that putting a karma system in place, and requiring registration, helped an awful lot.
So what gives? Why is the comment quality so much higher on LW than on OB? My first thought is karma, but OB didn’t have karma when Eliezer Yudkowsky was posting, and the comments were pretty good back then. My best guess is that the good commenters were mostly Yudkowsky fans, and they left when EY left.
I expect that was the biggest reason. When I started following OB it basically was Eliezer’s blog. Sure, occasionally Robin would post a quote and an interpretation but that was really just ‘intermission break’ entertainment.
I do note that comments here have been said to have reduced in quality. That is probably true and is somewhat related to lacking a stream of EY posts and also because there aren’t many other prominent posters (like Yvain, Roko, Wei, etc.) posting on the more fascinating topics. (At least, fascinating to me.)
I expect that was the biggest reason. When I started following OB it basically was Eliezer’s blog. Sure, occasionally Robin would post a quote and an interpretation but that was really just ‘intermission break’ entertainment.
lol, yeah, that’s the impression I got in the OB days. When there was discussion about renaming the site, I half-seriously thought it should be called “Eliezer Yudkowsky and the backup squad” :-P
I do note that comments here have been said to have reduced in quality. That is probably true and is somewhat related to lacking a stream of EY posts and also because there aren’t many other prominent posters (like Yvain, Roko, Wei, etc.) posting on the more fascinating topics.
Oh man, just you wait! I’m almost done with one. Here’s the title and summary:
Title: Morality as Parfitian-filtered Decision Theory? (Alternate title: Morality as Anthropic Acausal Optimization?)
Summary: Situations like the Parfit’s Hitchhiker problem select for a certain kind of mind: specifically, one that recognizes that an action can be optimal, in a self-interested sense, even if it can no longer cause any future benefit. A mind that can identify such actions might place them in a different category which enables it to perform them, in defiance of the (futureward) consequentialist concerns that normally need to motivate it. Our evolutionary history has put us through such “Parfitian filters”, and the corresponding actions, viewed from the inside, feel like “the right thing to do”; we are unconvinced by arguments that point out the lack of a future benefit—or our estimates of the magnitude of what future benefits do exist is skewed upward. Therein lies the origin of our moral intuitions, as well as the basis for creating the category “morality” in the first place.
I know I’ve been mentioning Good and Real constantly since I read it, but this sounds a bit like the account of human decision theory (morality) in G&R...
I’ve made about six different 3-paragraph posts about G&R in the past three weeks, so I think you’re safe ;-)
And yes, it does draw heavily on Drescher’s account of the overlap between “morality” and “acting as if recognizing subjunctive acausal means-end links” (which I hope to abbreviate to SAMEL without provoking a riot).
Anyone know how to do linked footnotes? Where you have a link that jumps to the bottom and one at the bottom that jumps back to the point in the text? I suppose I could just do [1], [2], etc., but I figure that would annoy people.
I’m looking forward to that one! I can’t guarantee that I’ll agree with all of it (it will depend on how strong you make some of the claims in the middle) but I can tell I’ll be engaged either way.
My first impression from the titles was that the ‘Alternative’ one was far better. But on reflection it sounds like the first title would be more accurate.
Who, in particular, said the comments have reduced in quality?
rhollerith_dot_com is one. I don’t think I am being excessively controversial here. Ebbs and flows of post content are inevitable and even just looking at the voting trends in the post list. There is little shame in such a variation… it is a good sign that people are busy doing real work!
Your post seems weasel-wordy to me as it currently stands.
Perhaps, but it was also polite. I did not (and still am not) providing the explicit link because I don’t see it necessary to direct people to the surrounding context. The context represents a situation that was later shown to be a success story in personal development but at that time reflected negatively.
I don’t follow OB, but your comment sent me over there to look around. What I saw was a lot of criticism from feminists regarding posts by Robin that had a strong anti-feminist odor to them. I also saw some posts on less controversial subjects that drew almost no comments at all. So the natural presumption is that those feminist commentors are not regulars, but rather were attracted to OB when a post relevant to their core interests got syndicated somewhere. If that is what you are talking about then …
Well, sure, a registration system might have repelled some of the commentors. If Robin really wants to insulate himself from feedback in this way, it might work. But I rather doubt that he is the kind of person to exclaim “OMG, we have wymin commenting here! Who let them in?”. I hope his regulars aren’t either.
Some comments on topics like this are emotive. Admittedly, you can’t really engage with them. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least read them, count them, and try to learn something from their sheer existence, if not from their logic.
That isn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about a general impression I’ve gotten over the last year. Robin’s recent posts have received an Instalanche, so they’re hardly representative.
However, I don’t know if anyone else shares my impression about OB commenter quality, so I may be completely misguided here.
Absolutely. OB posts are worth a read occasionally but the comments are not. And here I include even comments (not posts) by Robin himself. The way Robin replies does, I suggest, contribute to who is willing or interested in commenting there. Status interferes rather drastically with the ability of prominent figures to engage usefully in a public forum. By public forum I refer to the generic meaning not electronic adoption. It is often the case that hecklers wishing to shame and express outrage are the only ones who consider it worthwhile to show up.
For my part if I was particularly keen on discussing a topic from OB I would consider bringing it up on the open thread on LW.
IMO, the quality of comments on Overcoming Bias has diminished significantly since Less Wrong started up. This was true almost from the beginning, but the situation has really spiraled out of control more recently.
I gave up reading the comments regularly last year, but once a week or so, I peek at the comments and they are atrociously bad (and almost uniformly negative). The great majority seem unwilling to even engage with Robin Hanson’s arguments and instead rely on shaming techniques.
So what gives? Why is the comment quality so much higher on LW than on OB? My first thought is karma, but OB didn’t have karma when Eliezer Yudkowsky was posting, and the comments were pretty good back then. My best guess is that the good commenters were mostly Yudkowsky fans, and they left when EY left.
However, I don’t know if anyone else shares my impression about OB commenter quality, so I may be completely misguided here.
I wasn’t reading OB before LW existed, but if you look there now, it’s immediately apparent that the topics represented on the front page are much, much, much more interesting to the average casual reader than the ones on LW’s front page. I wouldn’t be surprised if the commenters tended to be less invested and less focused as a result.
(EDIT: I shouldn’t say the “average casual reader,” since that must mean something different to everyone. I clarified what I meant below in response to katydee; I think OB appeals to a large audience of interested laymen who like accessible, smart writing on a variety of topics, but who aren’t very interested in a lot of LW’s denser and more academic discussion.)
I suppose I’m not the average casual reader, but here’s my comparison--
Less Wrong front page:
-Occam efficiency/rationality games—low interest
-Strategies for confronting existential risk—high interest
-Potential biases in evolutionary psychology—mid-level interest
-Taking ideas seriously—extremely high interest
-Various community threads—low/mid interest
-Quick explanations of rationality techniques—extremely high interest
-Conflicts within the mind—mid/high interest
Overcoming Bias front page:
-Personality trait effects on romantic relationships—minimal interest
-Status and reproduction—minimal interest
-Flaws with medicine- mid-level interest
-False virginity—no interest beyond “it exists”
-(In)efficiency of free parking—minimal interest
-Strategies for influencing the future—high interest
-Reproductive ethics—minimal interest
-Economic debate—minimal interest
Only two of the Overcoming Bias articles were interesting to me at all; only one was strongly interesting, and it was also short. Less Wrong seemed, at least to me, to have better/more interesting topics than Overcoming Bias, which might be why it has better/more interesting discussions.
I totally agree with you; that’s why I’m here!
But personally, I know a lot of fairly smart, moderately well-educated people who just aren’t very interested in a life of the mind. They don’t get a lot out of studying philosophy and math, they read a little but not a lot, they don’t seek intellectual self-improvement, and they aren’t terribly introspective. However, they all have a passing interest in current events, technology, economics, and social issues; the stuff you’d find in the New Yorker or Harper’s, or on news aggregators. Hanson’s writing on these topics is exactly the sort of thing that appeals to that demographic, whereas Less Wrong is just not.
I certainly find Hanson’s anecdotes far more useful when socialising with people that have interested in hearing surprising stories about human behaviour (ie. most of the people I bother socialising with). The ability to drop sound bites is, after all, the primary purpose of keeping ‘informed’ in general.
It seems unusual that people would have a passing interest in technical issues in economics but not psychology.
Hmm, you seem to be seeing a totally different OB “front page” to me. Where are you seeing those articles?
edit: nevermind, I thought this was the current open thread. I didn’t see that it was from 2010.
I remember there being lots of bad comments on the old OB, and I think that putting a karma system in place, and requiring registration, helped an awful lot.
I expect that was the biggest reason. When I started following OB it basically was Eliezer’s blog. Sure, occasionally Robin would post a quote and an interpretation but that was really just ‘intermission break’ entertainment.
I do note that comments here have been said to have reduced in quality. That is probably true and is somewhat related to lacking a stream of EY posts and also because there aren’t many other prominent posters (like Yvain, Roko, Wei, etc.) posting on the more fascinating topics. (At least, fascinating to me.)
lol, yeah, that’s the impression I got in the OB days. When there was discussion about renaming the site, I half-seriously thought it should be called “Eliezer Yudkowsky and the backup squad” :-P
Oh man, just you wait! I’m almost done with one. Here’s the title and summary:
Title: Morality as Parfitian-filtered Decision Theory? (Alternate title: Morality as Anthropic Acausal Optimization?)
Summary: Situations like the Parfit’s Hitchhiker problem select for a certain kind of mind: specifically, one that recognizes that an action can be optimal, in a self-interested sense, even if it can no longer cause any future benefit. A mind that can identify such actions might place them in a different category which enables it to perform them, in defiance of the (futureward) consequentialist concerns that normally need to motivate it. Our evolutionary history has put us through such “Parfitian filters”, and the corresponding actions, viewed from the inside, feel like “the right thing to do”; we are unconvinced by arguments that point out the lack of a future benefit—or our estimates of the magnitude of what future benefits do exist is skewed upward. Therein lies the origin of our moral intuitions, as well as the basis for creating the category “morality” in the first place.
I know I’ve been mentioning Good and Real constantly since I read it, but this sounds a bit like the account of human decision theory (morality) in G&R...
I’ve made about six different 3-paragraph posts about G&R in the past three weeks, so I think you’re safe ;-)
And yes, it does draw heavily on Drescher’s account of the overlap between “morality” and “acting as if recognizing subjunctive acausal means-end links” (which I hope to abbreviate to SAMEL without provoking a riot).
Anyone know how to do linked footnotes? Where you have a link that jumps to the bottom and one at the bottom that jumps back to the point in the text? I suppose I could just do [1], [2], etc., but I figure that would annoy people.
I’m looking forward to that one! I can’t guarantee that I’ll agree with all of it (it will depend on how strong you make some of the claims in the middle) but I can tell I’ll be engaged either way.
My first impression from the titles was that the ‘Alternative’ one was far better. But on reflection it sounds like the first title would be more accurate.
That sounds like a follow-up or generalization of your blog post on Parfit’s Hitchhiker and intellectual property. I look forward to it!
Who, in particular, said the comments have reduced in quality? Your post seems weasel-wordy to me as it currently stands.
rhollerith_dot_com is one. I don’t think I am being excessively controversial here. Ebbs and flows of post content are inevitable and even just looking at the voting trends in the post list. There is little shame in such a variation… it is a good sign that people are busy doing real work!
Perhaps, but it was also polite. I did not (and still am not) providing the explicit link because I don’t see it necessary to direct people to the surrounding context. The context represents a situation that was later shown to be a success story in personal development but at that time reflected negatively.
In the OB days, I mainly read it because of EY. Maybe others did too. I’m surprised that OB still wins in the usage stats.
I don’t follow OB, but your comment sent me over there to look around. What I saw was a lot of criticism from feminists regarding posts by Robin that had a strong anti-feminist odor to them. I also saw some posts on less controversial subjects that drew almost no comments at all. So the natural presumption is that those feminist commentors are not regulars, but rather were attracted to OB when a post relevant to their core interests got syndicated somewhere. If that is what you are talking about then …
Well, sure, a registration system might have repelled some of the commentors. If Robin really wants to insulate himself from feedback in this way, it might work. But I rather doubt that he is the kind of person to exclaim “OMG, we have wymin commenting here! Who let them in?”. I hope his regulars aren’t either.
Some comments on topics like this are emotive. Admittedly, you can’t really engage with them. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least read them, count them, and try to learn something from their sheer existence, if not from their logic.
That isn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about a general impression I’ve gotten over the last year. Robin’s recent posts have received an Instalanche, so they’re hardly representative.
Absolutely. OB posts are worth a read occasionally but the comments are not. And here I include even comments (not posts) by Robin himself. The way Robin replies does, I suggest, contribute to who is willing or interested in commenting there. Status interferes rather drastically with the ability of prominent figures to engage usefully in a public forum. By public forum I refer to the generic meaning not electronic adoption. It is often the case that hecklers wishing to shame and express outrage are the only ones who consider it worthwhile to show up.
For my part if I was particularly keen on discussing a topic from OB I would consider bringing it up on the open thread on LW.