If someone were to make a statement about what another person was sincere about, without even knowing that person, without ever having met that person, or without having spent more than a week interacting with that person, would you say their statement was irrational?
By the way, you do not need to indicate who a comment is to in a reply—it is clearly listed at the top of any comment you post as a reply, and is automatically sent to the user’s inbox.
Agreed. Really just a prominent indication that they exist might be enough, since they’re pretty much in the obvious place to check once you know they’re there.
Though PMs don’t let me argue with you in public, which eliminates most of the status-management function of argument. (I’m not claiming here that this is a bad thing, mind you.)
It does have the effect of signaling that third parties are not welcome to respond, though, which might be desirable.
This approximately describes my reason for downvoting the comment in question. I deny the right of anyone to choose who may reply to their public comments. That is, I deny the right of anyone to claim a soapbox from which they can speak without reply from those that their rhetoric may impact.
As thomblake mentioned, there is a private messaging feature for direct personal communication. For public communication everyone may reply.
Does it really signal that, any more than using the word “you”? Will wedrifid downvote comments that do that, as well? (Who other than wedrifid is qualified to answer that last question, I wonder? I won’t tell anyone they can’t, but I do reserve the right to assign a low probability to them being correct if wedrifid makes a statement on the issue that contradicts someone else’s, and such an answer will have lower value to me and I suspect anyone else reading it.)
Does it really signal that, any more than using the word “you”?
Assuming you’re asking the question genuinely, rather than rhetorically: it certainly signals that to me more than using the word “you” does, yes. Of course, my reaction might be idiosyncratic.
In my own opinion, I think it’s more grandstanding than anything… of the same sort as “are you actually claiming”* - it’s an attempt to put the other person on the spot, and make them feel as if they need to defend their opinions.
*No offense… I don’t like the karma system either, but the comparison to soviet era repression was a bit much. But, then, maybe I don’t feel a loss of karma as acutely since I don’t write articles.
I suspect you’re right. Still, I try to treat questions as though they were sincere even if I’m pretty sure they’re rhetorical; it seems the more charitable route.
But, then, maybe I don’t feel a loss of karma as acutely since I don’t write articles.
That is a real concern, though it was mostly solved via the discussion section. Article-writing has karma thresholds for posting, so someone who posts a bad article to main could lose enough karma to not be able to post anymore; furthermore, one would expect a first post to be bad and so it seems this might happen to every new user who tries to post an article. But the discussion section has lower penalties for article downvotes, and lower quality standards, so it’s not so bad.
I’d express my agreement as though it was evidence against the idiosyncraticity of the reaction, but it’s very weak evidence since we’ve agreed on a few of these now.
I now want a linguistic convention for expressing agreement while explicitly not proposing that agreement as independent evidence. Kind of like “I agree, but what do I know?” except I want it to be a single word and not read as passive-aggressive.
Does it really signal that, any more than using the word “you”?
Somewhat more, yes.
Will wedrifid downvote comments that do that, as well?
Given that wedrifid seems to use ‘you’ rather frequently in comments I infer that he doesn’t have any particular problem with it. It should be noted that surrounding context and content of the comment makes a big difference on how wedrifid interprets such comments, more so than the specific nature of the address.
Who other than wedrifid is qualified to answer that last question, I wonder?
Vladimir_Nesov could probably give a decent guess. He’s been around to see the wedrifid lesswrong persona for as long as lesswrong has been around and of those that have expressed their voting style probably has the most similar voting habits to wedrifid.
I won’t tell anyone they can’t, but I do reserve the right to assign a low probability to them being correct if wedrifid makes a statement on the issue that contradicts someone else’s, and such an answer will have lower value to me and I suspect anyone else reading it.
For some people it would be tempting to say that a third party is more likely to correctly predict the other’s voting pattern, simply because people have plausible incentive to lie. I thank you for your implied expression of confidence in my honesty! :)
I concede the win to you, even though I still think the objection is silly, and that you should have simply asked him not to do it instead of the high-handed passive-aggressive “I will downvote any future comments that do that”.
For some people it would be tempting to say that a third party is more likely to correctly predict the other’s voting pattern, simply because people have plausible incentive to lie. I thank you for your implied expression of confidence in my honesty! :)
Well, no-one else can see your votes, anyway, can they? ;)
Win? I’m confused. I didn’t think I was competing with you about anything! Were we arguing about something? I thought I was expressing my preferences in the form of a tangent from your description.
passive-aggressive
Aggressive perhaps and I can understand why you may say “high-handed”, but passive? There is no way that is remotely passive. It’s a clear and direct expression of active policy! Approximately the opposite to passive. Some would even take it as a threat (even though it technically doesn’t qualify as such since it is just what would be done anyway even without any desire to control the other.)
and that you should have simply asked him not to do it
I acknowledge your preference that I ask people not to do a behavior rather than declare that I downvote a behavior. In this case I will not comply but can at least explain. I don’t like asking things of those with whom I have no rapport and no reason to expect them to wish to assist me. To me that just feels unnatural. In fact, the only reason I would ask in such a case is because to do so influences the audience and thereby manipulates the target. Instead I like to acknowledge where the real boundaries of influence are. I influence my votes. He influences his comments. Others influence their votes.
In the end it could be that you upvote most instances of a thing while I downvote most instances of a thing. We cancel out, with the only change being that between the two of us we lose one person’s worth of voting nuance in such cases.
The “passive-aggressive” bit, in my opinion, was where he solicited people’s opinion on whether it offends them, and you skipped past actually saying it offends you and went to threats.
For what it is worth, I will (continue to) downvote comments that take the form and role that the great-grandparent takes. Take that into consideration to whatever extent karma considerations bother you.
FWIW, it did not read that way to me—it seemed like an efficient statement of consequences. Asking someone not to do X does not imply X will be downvoted in the future. And folks like myself sometimes make comments with negative expected karma.
If someone has stated they won’t do it if someone asks them not to, and his goal was for there to be fewer such comments in the future (which is the general goal of downvoting things), then it would be more efficient in terms of achieving that goal to lead by simply asking politely not to, and maybe add the “and I’ll downvote anyone who does” as a postscript.
Leading with the downvote threat seemed needlessly belligerent.
I find it impolite—it increases the length of your comment and number of characters on the screen and does not provide any information. That said, I am not terribly bothered by it, so ‘whatever floats your gerbil’.
I think it is polite, and if it does not offend you or anyone else I will keep doing it.
For what it is worth, I will (continue to) downvote comments that take the form and role that the great-grandparent takes. Take that into consideration to whatever extent karma considerations bother you.
So if it bothers you why not just say so. I said if it offends you or anyone else please tell me. At this point wedrifid all you are doing is hazing me due to personal insecurities.
Didn’t I just do that? I phrased it in terms of what I can control (my own votes) and what influence that has on you (karma). That gives no presumption or expectation that you must heed my wishes.
At this point wedrifid all you are doing is hazing me due to personal insecurities.
That is a big leap! I don’t think I’m doing that. Mind you, given the power that hazing has in making significant and lasting change in people I would make use of it as a tool of influence if I could work out how!
Hm. I was going to say that it’s certainly possible. But then, thinking about it some more, I realized that my working definition of “hazing” is almost entirely congruent with “harassment.” It’s certainly possible to harass people on LW, but the social costs to the harasser can be significant (depending on how well it’s finessed, of course). I guess that to get the social-influence-with-impunity effects of hazing I’d need to first establish a social norm sufficiently ubiquitous that harassing someone in the name of enforcing that social norm is reliably categorized as “enforcing the norm” (and thus praised) rather than “harassing people” (and thus condemned).
Hm. It seems to follow that the first step would be to recruit local celebrities (Eliezer, Luke, Alicorn, Yvain, etc.) to your cause. Which means, really, that the first step would be to make a compelling case for the significant changes you want to use hazing to make.
It also seems likely that you should do that in private, rather than be seen to do so. In fact, perhaps your first step ought to be to convince me to delete this comment.
In fact, perhaps your first step ought to be to convince me to delete this comment.
This reminds me of a time a friend suggested, out loud in public, burning down someone’s house in retribution, and I was like “Shut up, we can’t use that plan now!” It’s annoying when possible paths get pruned for no good reason.
Sounds like more trouble than it is worth… unless.… Do I get to dress up in a cloak and spank people with paddles? Ooh, and beer pong and sending chicks on ‘walks of shame’. I really missed out—we don’t have frats here in Aus.
Hey, you’re the one who said you’d use it if you knew how. I was just responding to the implied need.
That said, I hereby grant you dispensation to dress up in a cloak. I’m probably OK with you playing beer pong, though I’m not really sure what that is. The spanking and the sending people on walks you’ll have to negotiate with the spankees and the walkers.
That said, I hereby grant you dispensation to dress up in a cloak. I’m probably OK with you playing beer pong, though I’m not really sure what that is.
I’m not either to be honest.
The spanking and the sending people on walks you’ll have to negotiate with the spankees and the walkers.
Come to think of it I think I might dismiss the ‘spankees’ class entirely, abandon the ‘walk’ notion and proceed to negotiate mutual spanking options with those formerly in the ‘walker’ class. I don’t think I have the proper frat-boy spirit.
So you didn’t just go through and down vote a ton of my posts all at once?
No, I couldn’t have done that. I had already downvoted the overwhelming majority of your comments at the time when I encountered them. We’ve already had a conversation about whether or not the downvotes you had received were justified—if you recall I said ‘yes’. I’m not allowed to vote down twice so no karma-assassination for me!
At this point wedrifid all you are doing is hazing me due to personal insecurities.
I’m confused. Aren’t personal insecurities the sort of thing you claimed was ‘irrational’ to comment on? Have you reversed your position, or do you not care about being rational, or is this a special case?
It appears that someone has been downvoting every comment in this tree. Which is arguably appropriate, since responding to trolls is nearly as bad as trolling, and by Lucius’s standard (roughly, ‘Cui bono?’) this thread has undeniably been trolling.
So Mr. Thomblake,
If someone were to make a statement about what another person was sincere about, without even knowing that person, without ever having met that person, or without having spent more than a week interacting with that person, would you say their statement was irrational?
By the way, you do not need to indicate who a comment is to in a reply—it is clearly listed at the top of any comment you post as a reply, and is automatically sent to the user’s inbox.
It does have the effect of signaling that third parties are not welcome to respond, though, which might be desirable.
There is a mechanism for that too—private messages.
There is? Oh, there it is. It could stand to be a little more visible.
Agreed. Really just a prominent indication that they exist might be enough, since they’re pretty much in the obvious place to check once you know they’re there.
True.
Though PMs don’t let me argue with you in public, which eliminates most of the status-management function of argument. (I’m not claiming here that this is a bad thing, mind you.)
Indeed
This approximately describes my reason for downvoting the comment in question. I deny the right of anyone to choose who may reply to their public comments. That is, I deny the right of anyone to claim a soapbox from which they can speak without reply from those that their rhetoric may impact.
As thomblake mentioned, there is a private messaging feature for direct personal communication. For public communication everyone may reply.
Does it really signal that, any more than using the word “you”? Will wedrifid downvote comments that do that, as well? (Who other than wedrifid is qualified to answer that last question, I wonder? I won’t tell anyone they can’t, but I do reserve the right to assign a low probability to them being correct if wedrifid makes a statement on the issue that contradicts someone else’s, and such an answer will have lower value to me and I suspect anyone else reading it.)
Assuming you’re asking the question genuinely, rather than rhetorically: it certainly signals that to me more than using the word “you” does, yes. Of course, my reaction might be idiosyncratic.
In my own opinion, I think it’s more grandstanding than anything… of the same sort as “are you actually claiming”* - it’s an attempt to put the other person on the spot, and make them feel as if they need to defend their opinions.
*No offense… I don’t like the karma system either, but the comparison to soviet era repression was a bit much. But, then, maybe I don’t feel a loss of karma as acutely since I don’t write articles.
I suspect you’re right. Still, I try to treat questions as though they were sincere even if I’m pretty sure they’re rhetorical; it seems the more charitable route.
That is a real concern, though it was mostly solved via the discussion section. Article-writing has karma thresholds for posting, so someone who posts a bad article to main could lose enough karma to not be able to post anymore; furthermore, one would expect a first post to be bad and so it seems this might happen to every new user who tries to post an article. But the discussion section has lower penalties for article downvotes, and lower quality standards, so it’s not so bad.
I’d express my agreement as though it was evidence against the idiosyncraticity of the reaction, but it’s very weak evidence since we’ve agreed on a few of these now.
I now want a linguistic convention for expressing agreement while explicitly not proposing that agreement as independent evidence. Kind of like “I agree, but what do I know?” except I want it to be a single word and not read as passive-aggressive.
Perhaps “seconded”?
I think it’s too uncommon a case to warrant a short linguistic representation.
Probably.
Somewhat more, yes.
Given that wedrifid seems to use ‘you’ rather frequently in comments I infer that he doesn’t have any particular problem with it. It should be noted that surrounding context and content of the comment makes a big difference on how wedrifid interprets such comments, more so than the specific nature of the address.
Vladimir_Nesov could probably give a decent guess. He’s been around to see the wedrifid lesswrong persona for as long as lesswrong has been around and of those that have expressed their voting style probably has the most similar voting habits to wedrifid.
For some people it would be tempting to say that a third party is more likely to correctly predict the other’s voting pattern, simply because people have plausible incentive to lie. I thank you for your implied expression of confidence in my honesty! :)
I concede the win to you, even though I still think the objection is silly, and that you should have simply asked him not to do it instead of the high-handed passive-aggressive “I will downvote any future comments that do that”.
Well, no-one else can see your votes, anyway, can they? ;)
Win? I’m confused. I didn’t think I was competing with you about anything! Were we arguing about something? I thought I was expressing my preferences in the form of a tangent from your description.
Aggressive perhaps and I can understand why you may say “high-handed”, but passive? There is no way that is remotely passive. It’s a clear and direct expression of active policy! Approximately the opposite to passive. Some would even take it as a threat (even though it technically doesn’t qualify as such since it is just what would be done anyway even without any desire to control the other.)
I acknowledge your preference that I ask people not to do a behavior rather than declare that I downvote a behavior. In this case I will not comply but can at least explain. I don’t like asking things of those with whom I have no rapport and no reason to expect them to wish to assist me. To me that just feels unnatural. In fact, the only reason I would ask in such a case is because to do so influences the audience and thereby manipulates the target. Instead I like to acknowledge where the real boundaries of influence are. I influence my votes. He influences his comments. Others influence their votes.
In the end it could be that you upvote most instances of a thing while I downvote most instances of a thing. We cancel out, with the only change being that between the two of us we lose one person’s worth of voting nuance in such cases.
The “passive-aggressive” bit, in my opinion, was where he solicited people’s opinion on whether it offends them, and you skipped past actually saying it offends you and went to threats.
I assume you’re referring to this:
FWIW, it did not read that way to me—it seemed like an efficient statement of consequences. Asking someone not to do X does not imply X will be downvoted in the future. And folks like myself sometimes make comments with negative expected karma.
If someone has stated they won’t do it if someone asks them not to, and his goal was for there to be fewer such comments in the future (which is the general goal of downvoting things), then it would be more efficient in terms of achieving that goal to lead by simply asking politely not to, and maybe add the “and I’ll downvote anyone who does” as a postscript.
Leading with the downvote threat seemed needlessly belligerent.
Or it is just polite
I think it is polite, and if it does not offend you or anyone else I will keep doing it.
I find it impolite—it increases the length of your comment and number of characters on the screen and does not provide any information. That said, I am not terribly bothered by it, so ‘whatever floats your gerbil’.
For what it is worth, I will (continue to) downvote comments that take the form and role that the great-grandparent takes. Take that into consideration to whatever extent karma considerations bother you.
So if it bothers you why not just say so. I said if it offends you or anyone else please tell me. At this point wedrifid all you are doing is hazing me due to personal insecurities.
Didn’t I just do that? I phrased it in terms of what I can control (my own votes) and what influence that has on you (karma). That gives no presumption or expectation that you must heed my wishes.
That is a big leap! I don’t think I’m doing that. Mind you, given the power that hazing has in making significant and lasting change in people I would make use of it as a tool of influence if I could work out how!
Hm.
I was going to say that it’s certainly possible.
But then, thinking about it some more, I realized that my working definition of “hazing” is almost entirely congruent with “harassment.” It’s certainly possible to harass people on LW, but the social costs to the harasser can be significant (depending on how well it’s finessed, of course).
I guess that to get the social-influence-with-impunity effects of hazing I’d need to first establish a social norm sufficiently ubiquitous that harassing someone in the name of enforcing that social norm is reliably categorized as “enforcing the norm” (and thus praised) rather than “harassing people” (and thus condemned).
Hm.
It seems to follow that the first step would be to recruit local celebrities (Eliezer, Luke, Alicorn, Yvain, etc.) to your cause. Which means, really, that the first step would be to make a compelling case for the significant changes you want to use hazing to make.
It also seems likely that you should do that in private, rather than be seen to do so.
In fact, perhaps your first step ought to be to convince me to delete this comment.
This reminds me of a time a friend suggested, out loud in public, burning down someone’s house in retribution, and I was like “Shut up, we can’t use that plan now!” It’s annoying when possible paths get pruned for no good reason.
Sounds like more trouble than it is worth… unless.… Do I get to dress up in a cloak and spank people with paddles? Ooh, and beer pong and sending chicks on ‘walks of shame’. I really missed out—we don’t have frats here in Aus.
Hey, you’re the one who said you’d use it if you knew how. I was just responding to the implied need.
That said, I hereby grant you dispensation to dress up in a cloak. I’m probably OK with you playing beer pong, though I’m not really sure what that is. The spanking and the sending people on walks you’ll have to negotiate with the spankees and the walkers.
I’m not either to be honest.
Come to think of it I think I might dismiss the ‘spankees’ class entirely, abandon the ‘walk’ notion and proceed to negotiate mutual spanking options with those formerly in the ‘walker’ class. I don’t think I have the proper frat-boy spirit.
I think the people who play beer pong don’t even know what it is.
Oh no. It’s like Calvinball for jocks.
That is my new favorite thing.
So you didn’t just go through and down vote a ton of my posts all at once?
No, I couldn’t have done that. I had already downvoted the overwhelming majority of your comments at the time when I encountered them. We’ve already had a conversation about whether or not the downvotes you had received were justified—if you recall I said ‘yes’. I’m not allowed to vote down twice so no karma-assassination for me!
I’m confused. Aren’t personal insecurities the sort of thing you claimed was ‘irrational’ to comment on? Have you reversed your position, or do you not care about being rational, or is this a special case?
Before anyone complains...
It appears that someone has been downvoting every comment in this tree. Which is arguably appropriate, since responding to trolls is nearly as bad as trolling, and by Lucius’s standard (roughly, ‘Cui bono?’) this thread has undeniably been trolling.
No, I don’t characterize actions as flatly “irrational”, and statements are not a special case.