No, but it would be fundamentally altered. In my mind,
If you don’t mind I will use an analogy to more precisely explain my thoughts. The reality humans interact with in the analogy is an ocean. I don’t see humans as fish in the ocean. That would imply a fundamental separateness; that humans come into interaction with their reality, but are not a part of it. If you remove a fish from the ocean, the ocean for the most part is still the ocean. I see humans more as the salt in the ocean. Not as synthesized as say the hydrogen and oxygen are, but salt is pretty thoroughly mixed into the ocean. To remove all salt from the ocean would have such huge ramifications that what would remain would no longer be “an ocean” in traditional terms.
So no, I do not think that if humans disappear the universe disappears. I do think the portion of the universe we affect is largely defined by our presence, and that the removable of this presence would so alter its constitution that it would not be the reality we think of as reality today.
If humanity is as integral to our reality as you describe, then I am confused why our beliefs about how reality works don’t totally control how reality actually works. That is, I would expect human beliefs to have as much causal effect on objects as external forces like gravity and magnetism. You are study of the world shows that this isn’t so. In short, many people think it is a fundamental physical law that objects in motion eventually come to a stop. That’s their ordinary experience, but it is easy to show that it is totally wrong.
In general, scientific predictions about what will happen to physical objects in the future is not related to the consensus people have about what would happen (in other words, people are scientifically illiterate). Despite how unintuitive it seems, nothing can travel faster than light, and humans are descended from monkeys.
Improving humanity’s ability to make predictions about the future is the empirical project in a nutshell. That’s the source of the pushback in this post. If it turns out to be the case that there is no objective reality, external to human experience, it follows pretty closely that the modern scientific project is pointless. In short, if the world is not real (existing external to humanity), what’s the point in studying it?
If humanity is as integral to our reality as you describe, then I am confused why our beliefs about how reality works don’t totally control how reality actually works.
Wouldn’t you say oxygen is integral to the current reality of earth? That does not mean that the current reality of earth is shaped by the will of oxygen. Saying that humanity is integral to the constitution of our reality is different from saying humanity consciously defines the constitution of its reality. Right?
I do think the portion of the universe we affect is largely defined by our presence, and that the removable of this presence would so alter its constitution that it would not be the reality we think of as reality today.
Do you think that, say, 100 million years ago (when there were mammals and plants pretty similar to what we know now on Earth, but no humans), that reality was significantly different?
I’m not saying I disagree with you. An Earth with humans on it has a very different potential future path than an Earth with nothing more complicated than squirrels. But the current Earth with humans on it is only a bit changed (hole in ozone layer, mild-so-far global warming which may or may not be human-caused), and outside of the solar system, we’ve hardly changed anything as of yet.
No offense, but I would suggest reading some environmental studies literature, or finding a friend in the field. We have changed a staggering amount of the earth’s surface level topography and ecosystems. Will we ever “destroy the earth” probably not. Humans lack the power to literally destroy the earth. Could we destroy the existing biosphere and the majority of life it supports? Yes, that is within our power, and in fact we are actively moving towards such a reality.
Do you think that, say, 100 million years ago (when there were mammals and plants pretty similar to what we know now on Earth, but no humans), that reality was significantly different?
Yes I do. Current extinction rates are the same as characterizes the Big Five episodes of mass extinction in the fossil record. Obviously it is not unanimous, but humans are the primary factor in this. In my opinion, the fact that the human impact on Earth’s biosphere is the equivalent of one of The five biggest episodes of mass extinction in the history of the planet is pretty good sign that we are making a significant difference compared to the mammals 100 million year ago.
I spend sizable chunks of time trying figure out how to deliver (what I feel are) just revolutionary ideas. Each time I find myself back on a computer I take a quick second to eagerly check if any one of these gems has earned me some Karma points. Ironically, in over 20 posts, the one that gets me any positive recognition is the one quick mental fart in the bunch that makes no real contribution to the running dialogue.
Haha for a community of rationalists the karma here has an odd rhetorical and aesthetic after taste. ^)^
I upvoted it :) Because it made me smile, so upvoting it was more the equivalent of liking someone’s status on Facebook than anything. I don’t think it’s really fair that you haven’t gotten more upvotes though, since someone is upvoting most of my comments in this discussion, and your points are just as detailed and well explained as mine...unless that’s you upvoting, in which case maybe I should scratch your back in return and upvote all of yours?
Haha I have been up voting you some. Not all the time, you definitely have other secret supporters, but some. But don’t up vote me now just because of that. I don’t want an up vote out of social obligation. And I didn’t post the comment about my mental fart to get up votes. I just think it is interesting how the karma system here works. To me it is a stark contradiction of the group mission. I don’t mean that to be mean.
So no, I only want up votes if my words genuinely spark in your mind as your read them. I could use a good back scratch though, no lie.
? If you’re referring to this comment, I see no evidence that I changed it, nor do I recall changing it, so I suspect your premise is false. If you’re referring to some other comment, I don’t know.
I can’t tell if you really want to hear the theory I have on this matter, or if this was just a sarcastic jab at the fact that maybe my ideas are not as wonderful as I think they are.
Yes, I probably worded that wrong. Revolutionary to this community. There is a significant body of minds, research, and literature that my ideas arise from. So to just say that they are “revolutionary ideas” was probably too vague. Revolutions happen in context. And I think the particular nexus of thought I am nestled in contains some attributes that if adopted would be revolutionary to this community.
That said, I actually am not looking for revolution in your community. I like your community. I just like having discussions like this one. I feel it keeps my thoughts and writing sharp. I enjoy it, and there is always the possibility that I will undergo a revolution!
P.S -Dave, more than talking about theories about your community I am interested in continuing our talk in the other post about the overall purpose of my essay .
Ironically, in over 20 posts, the one that gets me any positive recognition is the one quick mental fart in the bunch that makes no real contribution to the running dialogue.
Plausible hypothesis: All the other comments made a negative epistemic contribution and any upvotes you got would be quickly removed by those who dislike the pollution. The ‘mental fart’ doesn’t do any epistemic damage so altruistic punishers leave it alone.
Haha for a community of rationalists the karma here has an odd rhetorical and aesthetic after taste. ^)^
the other comments made a negative epistemic contribution and any upvotes you got would be quickly removed by those who dislike the pollution.
Could you further elaborate what you mean by a negative epistemic contribution?
To me it sounds like you are saying the ideas I am suggesting disagree with some intended epistemic regime and that there are agents attempting to weed them out?
I don’t like being downvoted either.
No, I don’t either, but what I really don’t like is reasons I am being down voted or up voted. it would be one thing if I was trolling, but I don’t think a person should be down voted for having a real disagreement and attempting to explain their position. It is especially disturbing to think that your hypothesis is right, and I am being down voted because the ideas I am trying to express have been labeled as ‘pollution.’ Doesn’t that strike you as very akin to soviet russia style censorship?
Could you further elaborate what you mean by a negative epistemic contribution?
People often complain about getting downvoted, attributing the downvotes to ironically irrational voters. Sometimes these accusations are correct (naturally, all instances where it is me that is so complaining fit this category!). More often the comments really did deserve to be downvoted and the complainer would be best served wizening up and taking a closer look at their commenting style.
Of those comments that do deserve downvoting the fault tends to lie in one or more of: behaving like an asshole, being wrong and belligerent about it or using argument styles that are irrational or disengenuous. I expect I would have noticed if you were behaving like an asshole (and I haven’t), which leaves the remainder, all things which could be described as a ‘negative epistemic contribution’.
I don’t make the claim that all your comments are bad. I haven’t read all of them—and accordingly I have not voted on all of them. I did read (and downvote) some. If I recall the comments were a bunch of rhetorical and semantic gymanstics trying to support a blatant contradiction and make it sound deep rather than like a mistake.
You make in the ancestor a challenge to the judgement of the community, asserting that their downvotes are wrong and your comments are worthy of upvotes. Usually claims of that form are mistaken and what I have seen suggests that this case is no exception. There is little shame in that—different things are appreciated in different communities and you are relatively unfamiliar with the things that are appreciated in this particular one. It is difficult to jump from one social hierarchy to another and maintain the same status (including level of confidence and unyielding assertiveness with respect to expressions of ideas). Usually a small down time is required while local conventions are learned. And the local conventions here really are more epistemically rational than wherever you came from (if the content of your comments is representative).
If you care about karma or the public sentiment that it represents then write comments that you expect people will appreciate. If you don’t care about karma then write comments according to whatever other criteria you do care about.
Ok so we agree I am not belligerent. I don’t think it is possible for you to tell someone that they are disingenuous, so that one is out too. All that leaves is the claim that my writing uses an irrational style.
If I recall the comments were a bunch of rhetorical and semantic gymnastics trying to support a blatant contradiction and make it sound deep rather than like a mistake.
If you are going to make a claim that I do not use rational styles of argumentation, why do you not have to yourself use rational styles of argumentation? It is not rational to make a claim without providing supporting evidence. You cannot just say that I am making blatant contradictions or performing “semantic gymnastics” without undertaking the burden of proof. You make an argument so that I can counter it, you can’t just libel me because you have deemed that to be what is logical. There is nothing rational about this method of writing.
Agreed that making a statement and not giving any supporting evidence doesn’t qualify as “rational.” I actually haven’t found the quality of your argument to be low, most of the time, but I’ll try to dredge up some examples of what I think wedrifid is talking about.
If you look back to my original post to arran, I state that there are multiple definitions of a paradox and all are acceptable. That what is fruitful is not trying to argue about which definition is correct, but to accept the plurality and try to learn a new point of reference from the one you have been trained in.
The standard mindset on LessWrong is that words are useful because they are specific and thus transmit the same concept between two people. Some words are more abstract than others (for example, ‘beauty’ can never be defined as specifically as ‘apple’), but the idea that we should embrace more possible definitions of a word goes deeply against LessWrong philosophy. It makes language less clear; a speaker will have to specify that “no, I’m talking about paradox2, not paradox1.” In which case you might as well have 2 different words for the 2 different concepts in the first place. I think most people on LW would count this as a negative epistemic contribution
Doesn’t that strike you as very akin to soviet russia style censorship?
This kind of comparison is very no-no on LessWrong, unless you very thoroughly explain all the similarities and justify why you think it’s a good comparison. See Politics is the Mind-Killer.
You can fight for the definitions you have been indoctrinated in, and in doing so fight to label me as wrong, or we can have a real dialogue.
Comes across as belligerant.
I don’t think there are really that many places where you had ‘bad’ arguments. The main thing is that you’re presenting a viewpoint very different from the established one here, and you’re using non-LW vocabulary (or vocabulary that is used here, but you’re using it differently as per your field of study), and when someone disagrees you start arguing about definitions, and so people pattern-match to ‘bad argument.’
I don’t think it is possible for you to tell someone that they are disingenuous
I do that all the time. There seems to be nothing in the meaning of the word that means it cannot be applied to another.
It is not rational to make a claim without providing supporting evidence.
That isn’t true. It is simply a different form of communication. Description is different from argumentative persuasion. It is not (necessarily) irrational to do the former.
You cannot just say that I am making blatant contradictions or performing “semantic gymnastics”
In the context the statement serves as an explanation for the downvotes. It is assumed that you or any readers familiar with the context will be able to remember the details. In fact this is one of those circumstances where “disingenuous” applies. There are multiple pages of conversation discussing your contradictions already and so pretending that there is not supporting evidence available is not credible.
without undertaking the burden of proof.
NO! “Burden of proof” is for courts and social battles, not thinking.
You make an argument so that I can counter it
This isn’t debate club either!
you can’t just libel me because you have deemed that to be what is logical.
Yes, with respect to libel, the aforementioned ‘burden of proof’ becomes relevant. Of course this isn’t libel, or a court. Consider that I would not have explained to you why (I perceive) your comments were downvoted if you didn’t bring them up and make implications about the irrationality of the voters and community. If you go around saying “You downvoted me therefore you suck!” then it drastically increases the chances that you will receive a reply “No, the downvotes are right because your comments sucked!”
NO! “Burden of proof” is for courts and social battles, not thinking.
You make an argument so that I can counter it
This isn’t debate club either!
So many people don’t seem to get this! It’s infuriating.
I wonder if it’s just word association with Traditional Rationality. People think making persuasive arguments has anything to do with what we’re doing here.
Yes, making persuasive arguments is often instrumentally useful, and so in that sense is a ‘rationality skill’ - but cooking and rock climbing are also ‘rationality skills’ in that sense.
My usual working theory is that smart people often learn that winning the argument game is a way for smart people to gain status, especially within academia and within communities of soi-disant smart people (aka mensa), and thus come to expect any community of smart people will use the argument game as a primary way to earn and retain status. They identify LW as a community of smart people, so they begin playing the argument game in order to establish their status.
And when playing the argument game results in _losing_status instead, they feel betrayed and defensive.
I don’t usually italicize it, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to encounter it italicized, especially in print. I imagine it depends one whether one considers it an English word borrowed from a foreign language (which I do) or a foreign phrase (which one plausibly could).
How odd! When I went there through google it didn’t ask for a login, but when I follow the link it does.
Anyway, summarized, his point is that the benefits to the right audience of using the right word at the right time outweigh the costs to everyone else either looking it up and learning a new word, getting the general meaning from context, or not understanding and ignoring it. But like much of Buckley, the original text is worth reading if you enjoy language.
Googling “Buckley eristic lapidary November” should get you a link that works.
We should probably just use those phrases directly then, rather than excluding possible readers without adding any informational content.
Nonsense. More words is better. Nuance is good. Words are trivially easy to look up.
I didn’t ask what the word meant, because by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed”.
Agreed that more words are better–more possible information can be conveyed. However, it sounds like you’re better than the average reader at grasping the meaning of words from context. (Knowing French, I can guess what ‘soi-disant’ means...having no idea, I don’t know if I would have deduced it from the context of just that one comment.)
It’s not unreasonable to infer from by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed” that thomblake didn’t interrupt his reading of the comment to go perform some other task (e.g., looking the word up on google).
I mean, if someone said about an essay that by the time they were done reading it they had a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, I would probably infer that the essay explained quantum mechanics, even though they might mean they started reading it in 2009, put it down unfinished to go study QM for three years, then found the unfinished essay (which was in fact about gardenias) and finished reading it.
As I understand it, “counterfactual” originates from history, it means, originally, when historians analyze what would happen if some particular thing had gone differently.
Really? I always thought it came from logic/semantics: a “counterfactual conditional” is one of the form “If X had happened, Y would have”, and there is a minor industry in finding truth conditions for them.
No, the difference is between serious historical studies of what would likely have happened, vs people who make up new characters who had no significance OTL to tell a good story.
To expand on this—a counterfactual might predict “and then we would still have dirigibles today”, or not, if asking “what if the Hindenburg disaster had not occurred.” It would probably NOT predict who would be president in 2012, neither would it predict that in a question wholly unrelated to air travel or lighter-than-air technology. An alternate history fiction story might need the president for the plot, and it might go with the current president or it might go with Jack Ryan. An alternate history timeline is somewhere in the middle, but in general will ask “what change could have made [some radically different way the modern world looks like]” rather than “what can we predict would have happened if [some change happened]” and refrain from speculation on stuff that can’t be predicted to any reasonable probability.
The line is also to some extent definable as between historians and fiction authors, though these can certainly overlap particularly in the amateur side of things.
I do that all the time. There seems to be nothing in the meaning of the word that means it cannot be applied to another.
Let me rephrase, it is irrational to make a declarative statement about the inner workings of another person’s mind, seeing as there is no way for one person to fully understand the mental state of another.
That isn’t true. It is simply a different form of communication. Description is different from argumentative persuasion. It is not (necessarily) irrational to do the former.
You talk to me about semantic gymnastics?
No, it is not necessarily irrational to be descriptive without providing evidence. Author’s of fiction can be descriptive and do not need to provide evidence, as well as several other mediums of writing. But come on, do you really think that if you attack my writing and intentions you don’t need evidence and that is ok?
NO! “Burden of proof” is for courts and social battles, not thinking.
This isn’t debate club either!
Wedrifid, if you do not think that it is the obligation of a rational statement to provide some evidence or reason for justification of its claim, then I do not know what to say to you.
If you go around saying “You downvoted me therefore you suck!” then it drastically increases the chances that you will receive a reply “No, the downvotes are right because your comments sucked!”
Anyone who read my comments and interpreted them as me saying “you down voted me therefore you suck!” is vilifying me. I made a comment about a time I got up voted and how I did not understand why out of everything I wrote that sentence was deemed more rational. I never insulted anyone, or was demeaning in anyway.
You talk to me about semantic gymnastics? No, it is not necessarily irrational to be descriptive without providing evidence. Author’s of fiction can be descriptive and do not need to provide evidence, as well as several other mediums of writing. But come on, do you really think that if you attack my writing and intentions you don’t need evidence and that is ok?
You are blatantly ignoring the direct reference to the relevant evidence that I provided in the grandparent. I repeat that reference now—read your inbox, scroll back until you find the dozen or so messages saying ‘this is just a contradiction!’ or equivalent. I repeat with extra emphasis that your denial of any evidence is completely incredible.
Any benefit of a doubt that you are communicating in good faith is rapidly eroding.
Let me rephrase, it is irrational to make a declarative statement about the inner workings of another person’s mind, seeing as there is no way for one person to fully understand the mental state of another.
No.
(Leaving aside the problems with declaring a course of action “irrational” without reference to a goal...)
There is no fact that I am 100% certain of. Any knowledge about the world is held at some probability between 0 and 1, exclusive. We make declarative statements of facts despite the necessary uncertainty. Statements about the inner workings of another person’s mind are in no way special with that respect; I can make declarative statements about your mind, and I can make declarative statements about my mind, and in neither case am I going to be completely certain. I can be wrong about your motivations, and you can be wrong about your motivations.
If you make a claim about the character of another person or the state of reality do you or do you not need some evidence to support it?
I can make claims about anything without supporting it, whether or not it’s about someone’s character. The moon is made of green cheese. George Washington was more akratic than my mother. See, there, I did it twice.
It can often be rational to do so. For example, if someone trustworthy offers me a million dollars for making the claim “two plus two equals five”, I will assert “two plus two equals five” and accept my million dollars.
If it helps resolve the confusion at all, my working theory is that HT believes unjustified and negative claims have been made about his/her character, and is trying to construct a formal structure that allows such claims to be rejected on formal grounds, rather than by evaluation of available evidence.
FWIW, I tend to respond to comments ignoring the context, as my main goal here is to improve the quality of the site by correcting minor mistakes (aside from cracking jokes and discussing Harry Potter).
Pretty sure he means epistemically irrational, not instrumentally.
Probably. But I’m finding myself more and more in the “epistemic rationality is a case of instrumental rationality” camp, though not to any particular effect personally since I rate epistemic rationality very highly for its own sake.
I understand what you are saying; you are saying that for the speaker of the statement it is not irrational, because the false statement might meet their motives. Or in other words, that rationality is completely dependent on the motives of the actor. Is this the rationality that your group idealizes? That as long as what I say or do works towards my personal motives it is rational? So if I want to convince the world that God is real, it is rational to make up whatever lies I see fit to delegitimize other belief systems?
So religious zealots are rational because they have a goal that their lies and craziness is helping them achieve? That is what you are arguing.
If someone told you that the moon was made of cheese, being a rational person, without providing any evidence of the fact, if they had no reason to believe that, they just believed it, you would think they were being irrational. And you know it. You just want to pick a fight.
Or in other words, that rationality is completely dependent on the motives of the actor.
In the sense I think you mean it, yes. Two equally rational actors with different motives will perform different acts.
That as long as what I say or do works towards my personal motives it is rational?
Yes.
So if I want to convince the world that God is real, it is rational to make up whatever lies I see fit to delegitimize other belief systems?
If that’s the most effective way to convince the world that God is real, and you value the world being convinced that God is real, yes.
So religious zealots are rational because they have a goal that their lies and craziness is helping them achieve?
Not necessarily, in that religious zealots don’t necessarily have such goals. But yes, if a religious zealot who in fact values things that are in fact best achieved through lies and craziness chooses to engage in those lies and craziness, that’s a rational act in the sense we mean it here.
If someone told you that the moon was made of cheese, being a rational person, without providing any evidence of the fact, if they had no reason to believe that, they just believed it, you would think they were being irrational.
Sure, that’s most likely true.
You just want to pick a fight.
You may be right about thomblake’s motives, though I find it unlikely. That said, deciding how likely I consider it is my responsibility. You are not obligated to provide evidence for it.
(nods) I was taking the “if they had no reason to believe that, they just believed it” part of the problem specification literally. (e.g., it’s not a joke, etc.)
Aha—I glossed over that bit as irrelevant since the scenario is someone saying some words, which is clearly a case for instrumental rather than epistemic rationality. I should probably have read the “someone told you” as the irrelevant bit and answered as though we were talking about epistemic rationality.
(nods) Of course in the real world you’re entirely correct. That said, I find a lot of thought experiments depend on positing a situation I can’t imagine any way of getting into and asking what follows from there.
I understand what you are saying; you are saying that for the speaker of the statement it is not irrational, because the false statement might meet their motives. Or in other words, that rationality is completely dependent on the motives of the actor.
Yes.
Is this the rationality that your group idealizes?
Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.
You may try to name the highest principle with names such as “the map that reflects the territory” or “experience of success and failure” or “Bayesian decision theory”. But perhaps you describe incorrectly the nameless virtue. How will you discover your mistake? Not by comparing your description to itself, but by comparing it to that which you did not name.
.
If someone told you that the moon was made of cheese, being a rational person, without providing any evidence of the fact, if they had no reason to believe that, they just believed it, you would think they were being irrational. And you know it.
No, I would generally not think someone was “being irrational” without specific reference to their motivations. If I must concern myself with the fulfillment of someone else’s utility function, it would usually take the form of “You should not X in order to Z because Y will more efficiently Z.” ETA: I would more likely think that their statement was a joke, and failing that think that it’s false and try to correct it. In case anyone’s curious, “the moon is made of green cheese” was a paradigm of a ridiculous, unproveable statement before humans went to the moon; and “green cheese” in this context means “new cheese”, not the color green.
You just want to pick a fight.
No, I’d rather be working on my dissertation, but I have a moral obligation to correct mistakes and falsehoods posted on this site.
I understand what you are saying; you are saying that for the speaker of the statement it is not irrational, because the false statement might meet their motives. Or in other words, that rationality is completely dependent on the motives of the actor.
Correct. As noted on another branch of this comment tree, this interpretation characterizes “instrumental rationality”, though a similar case could be made for “epistemic rationality”.
So religious zealots are rational because they have a goal that their lies and craziness is helping them achieve? That is what you are arguing.
That is not what I was arguing. If I understand you correctly however, you mean to say that what I’m arguing applies equally well to that case.
The important part of that statement is “X is rational”, where X is a human. Inasmuch as that predicate indicates that the subject behaves rationally most of the time, I would deny that it should be applied to any human. Humans are exceptionally bad at rationality.
That said, if a person X decided that course of action Y was the most efficient way to fulfill their utility function, then Y is rational by definition. (Of course, this applies equally well to non-persons with utility functions). Even if Y = “lies and craziness” or “religious belief” or “pin an aubergine to your lapel”.
So if I want to convince the world that God is real, it is rational to make up whatever lies I see fit to delegitimize other belief systems?
That’s a difficult empirical question, and outside my domain of expertise. You might want to consult an expert on lying, though I’d first question whether the subgoal of convincing the world that God is real, really advances your overall goals.
Let me rephrase, it is irrational to make a declarative statement about the inner workings of another person’s mind, seeing as there is no way for one person to fully understand the mental state of another.
Is it irrational to call a statement a lie? As I had understood the word, “disingenuous” is a fancy way to say “lying”.
(I don’t suppose you’d be enlightened if I said “Yes, that’s incorrect”)
Tell me honestly, do you really think that it is rational to make a declarative statement about something you know nothing about?
Do you consider it irrational to say the sky is blue when you are in a room with no window?
No, because there is reason and evidence to support the statement that the sky is blue. The most obvious of which is that it has been blue your entire life.
No offense, but your example is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. I am not saying that no statement can be made without evidence (this is Wedrifid’s semantic twist). My statement is that it is impossible for a person to directly know the subjective experience of another person’s consciousness, and that it is irrational to say that you know when someone is being insincere or not.
I think at this point I have to ask when you consider it to be rational to make a declarative statement, and what is “nothing” vs “enough”. And in particular, why you must have direct knowledge of the subjective experience to say they are being insincere.
If someone is here, on a site filled with reasonablly intelligent people who understand logic, and demonstrates elsewhere that they are reasonably intelligent and understand logic, and in one particular argument make obviously logically inconsistent statements, I don’t need their state of mind to say they’re being disingenuous. I don’t know how well that maps to this situation or what has been claimed about it.
Well, maybe it’s a bit too fancy to be stretched into “lying”. But the point is one of dishonesty, of a difference between actual intent and visible signs, and, what’s relevant here, it does imply a model of someone’s actual intentions (for “disingenuous”), or actual beliefs (for “lie”).
I don’t agree with HT that it’s irrational (his basis for this seems to imply that any declarative statement about anything ever is irrational), which is why I drew a comparison between it and something I assumed he would be unlikely to consider irrational in the sense he meant when saying it of calling someone disingenuous.
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.
It does not seem to be at all relevant. Which surprised me. I followed your link because I saw it was to the “not insane unsane” post which has a certain similarity to the rational/not-rational subject. Instead I can only assume you are trying to make some sort of petty personal insinuation—try as I might I can’t see any other point you could be making that isn’t a plain non-sequitur.
(I am left with the frustrating temptation to delete the referent despite considering it a useful or at least interesting contribution. The potential for any given comment to be used out of context can be limiting!)
It is especially disturbing to think that your hypothesis is right, and I am being down voted because the ideas I am trying to express have been labeled as ‘pollution.’ Doesn’t that strike you as very akin to soviet russia style censorship?
I must admit that history was never my strong suit. In Soviet Russia was ‘censorship’ a euphemism for “Sometimes when your peers think what you are saying is silly they give indications of disapproval”? I thought it was something more along the lines of:
Done by the authorities, not by the democratic action of your peers.
Involves stopping you from being able to say stuff and the confiscation or destruction of materials containing ideas they don’t want spread.
Some sort of harm is done to you. Maybe beatings. Perhaps a little killing of you and or your family. Gulags may be involved somehow.
It would seem that if the voting pattern you have experienced represents a failure mode of some kind that it is a decidedly democratic failure mode, not a communist one.
The rule of thumb here about votes is “downvote what you want less of, upvote what you want more of.” Everybody gets one vote. (Modulo cheaters who create sock-puppets, of course.)
Is that akin to your model of “soviet russia style censorship”? I’m no expert on politics, but it sounds much more like American-style democracy to me.
Incidentally, from what I’ve seen you do much more advocating for your position than “attempting to explain” it. If you want to advocate, go ahead, but I would prefer you label it honestly.
“Everybody gets one vote. (Modulo cheaters who create sock-puppets, of course.)” Also modulo people who take a proportionally large karma loss from serial downvoters.
Why is it that a minimum karma is required to downvote, when downvoting does not entail an expenditure of karma?
Why is it that a minimum karma is required to downvote
Downvoting several times hides posts from most readers, and so is potentially destructive. Destructive powers are not handed out to new members of the community for various reasons. For example, if there was no minimum karma requirement, then new folks could seriously wreck the site by hiding what members of the community think is “good content”.
For a possibly-related post, see well-kept gardens die by pacifism, which is in favor of more downvoting behavior but was posted just before the downvote cap was introduced.
I actually meant my post as an argument in favor of a karma cost to downvoting, not an opposition to a minimum karma requirement.
(re the other thing, I’m pretty sure HungryTurtle’s use of “democratic” was a rebuttal to TheOtherDave’s “Everybody gets one vote” and “sounds like democracy” applause lights)
Ah. I’m genearlly against a karma cost to downvoting, for basically the reasons outlined in well kept gardens die by pacifism—people read a loss of karma as “punishment” and should not be punished for helping to curate.
That said, I’m not very strongly against it, as I’ve seen it used effectively on Q&A sites like Stack Overflow, and I think being emotionally tied to high karma scores is silly.
ETA:
I’m pretty sure HungryTurtle’s use of “democratic” was a rebuttal to TheOtherDave’s “Everybody gets one vote” and “sounds like democracy” applause lights
Yeah, I figured that out after, but it just seemed like a non-sequitur as a reply to my comment.
Ah. I’m genearlly against a karma cost to downvoting, for basically the reasons outlined in well kept gardens die by pacifism—people read a loss of karma as “punishment” and should not be punished for helping to curate.
I too see downvoting as an altruistic service.
That said, I’m not very strongly against it, as I’ve seen it used effectively on Q&A sites like Stack Overflow, and I think being emotionally tied to high karma scores is silly.
I’m not too against it myself either. If I start running out of my 19k I’ll post some Rationalists Quotes or something.
If I start running out of my 19k I’ll post some Rationalists Quotes or something.
Yeah, I was going to make a comment about how the karma system is easy enough to game, but then I realized that by “game” I meant “write high-quality posts about rationality”. Rewriting a Wikipedia article about a cognitive bias we haven’t covered yet is probably worth about 500 karma. 1000 if it contains actionable material.
Loss of karma is a punishment. It only seems like it’s not when yours is high enough to isolate you from the actual effects and any realistic chance of having it wiped out over a single disagreement. Having it cost karma to downvote would make people think twice before downvoting a post that is already out of view, or downvoting all of someone’s posts in a subthread below a post that is already out of view.
The current system encourages piling on.
(EDIT: replaced “everyone’s posts” with “all of someone’s posts”, original wording was a mistake)
Loss of karma is a punishment. It only seems like it’s not when yours is high enough to isolate you from the actual effects and any realistic chance of having it wiped out over a single disagreement. Having it cost karma to downvote would make people think twice before downvoting a post that is already out of view, or downvoting all of someone’s posts in a subthread below a post that is already out of view.
It doesn’t seem to me like I would regard it as punishment even if someone could wipe out all my karma at once, and I would not downvote less if it cost me karma to downvote (assuming that was done instead of and equivalently to the downvote cap).
I am .85+ confident that replacing the downvote cap with a policy of spending karma to downvote would result in the total number of users issuing at least one downvote in a given month dropping by at least 50%, and .6+ confident of it dropping by at least 75%.
I am less confident about what effect it would have on the downvoting patterns of users who continue to issue at least one downvote. Call it (.2) no measurable effect, (.3) increased downvote rate, (.5) decreased rate, just to put some lines in the sand.
Do you think that between the detrimental effects of giving people angry about legitimate downvotes a target, and the beneficial effects of making people accountable for actual misuse of downvoting, making vote information publicly available would be a net benefit or net harm? (if downvoting itself is a good thing, wouldn’t people be rewarded in their standing in the community if people saw them making good downvotes?)
What about the effect of being able to downvote someone multiple times in a single subthread (with real effects on their karma) discouraging people from responding to requests for clarification? I know I’m not going to make that mistake again after getting burned.
I expect making vote information public would change (>95% of) users’ processes for deciding whether to vote, introducing significantly more consideration for the signaling effects of being seen to upvote or downvote a comment/post, and therefore proportionally less consideration for the desire to have more or fewer comments/posts like that one. I expect that, in turn, to reduce the overall emphasis on post/comment quality, which would likely make this site less valuable to me.
Bulk upvoting/downvoting like you describe is a trickier business. It often seems that people do so without really evaluating the comments they are voting on, as a way of punishing individuals. The term “karmassassination” is sometimes used around here to refer to that practice, and it’s frowned upon. On the other hand, voting on multiple comments in a thread, either because one wishes to see more/fewer threads of that sort, or because one genuinely considers each one to be individually entitled to the vote, is considered perfectly acceptable. It is, of course, difficult to automate a system that allows one but not the other.
Thinking about it now, enforcing a delay period between downvotes… say, preventing me from issuing more than one downvote in a 30-second period… might be a good modification.
A common problem with positive punishment as a training mechanism is that subjects overgeneralize on the target… e.g., learn some global lesson like “don’t ever respond to requests for clarification” even if the punisher intended a more narrow lesson like “don’t make comments like this one while responding to requests for clarification”. A (positive reinforcement plus negative punishment) training program, where undesirable behavior is ignored and desired behavior is rewarded, tends to work better, but requires significant self-discipline on the part of the trainer. When the training responsibility is distributed, this is difficult to manage. On pubilc forums like this one, I’ve never seen it implemented successfully, someone always ends up rewarding the undesirable behavior.
What about randomly (1 time in 10, say) requiring downvotes to be accompanied with an explanation (which will be posted as a comment, exposed to downvotes by the rest of the community if it’s a bad reason, and upvotes if it is a good one)?
What about allowing a post to be marked as “response to clarification request” and not subject to voting by anyone but the person it is in reply to?
What about randomly (1 time in 10, say) requiring downvotes to be accompanied with an explanation (which will be posted as a comment, exposed to downvotes by the rest of the community if it’s a bad reason, and upvotes if it is a good one)?
In the face of such a mechanism, I would surely protest it by posting a minimal comment along with the downvote, and also deleting it if that’s an option. Curation already feels somewhat like work; it doesn’t need to get harder.
What about allowing a post to be marked as “response to clarification request” and not subject to voting by anyone but the person it is in reply to?
Some folks actually won’t vote on anything in a thread they’ve commented on for neutrality reasons, and the last bit there seems inharmonious with that.
Is “get thicker-skinned about downvoting” an option?
How long have you been lurking here? You seem to have a lot of opinions about how good the existing mechanisms are for someone who hasn’t been commenting for very long.
I observe that the line you’re quoting was in response to your suggestion about the proposed required-explanation-for-downvote feature, which was not being proposed in the context of a post that was already at −11.
I infer that either you lost track of the context and genuinely believed thomblake was responding in that context, or you intentionally substituted one context for another for some purpose, presumably to make thomblake seem wrong and you seem right by contrast.
The former is a more charitable assumption, so with some misgivings, I am making it.
I was responding to the general idea that downvoting is “curation”. I don’t see why the specific context is necessary for that. Are you suggesting he wouldn’t have said the same thing in the other context? That posts already at or below −2 and posts in collapsed subthreads get downvoted shows that people downvote with non-curation purposes. Maybe the site would benefit from an explanation of what purposes they do have.
That posts already at or below −2 and posts in collapsed subthreads get downvoted shows that people downvote with non-curation purposes.
No. I do not generally check whether a comment is in a collapsed subthread before downvoting it. I downvote low-quality comments. It is more efficient.
If someone says that food is tasty and I reply “I don’t see how you can consider durian fruit tasty” I have gone from the general context (food) to a specific context (durian fruit).
In much the same way, if someone says downvoting is curation and I reply “well, nobody’s explained how downvoting a post that’s already at −11 is ‘curation’” I have gone from the general context (downvoting) to a specific (downvoting highly downvoted comments).
I would consider it reasonable, if I did either of those things, for an observer to conclude that I’d changed the context intentionally, in order to make it seem as though the speaker had said something I could more compellingly disagree with.
I haven’t seen a credible argument how downvoting a post that’s already at −11, or one that’s under several layers of collapsed posts, is “curation”.
I don’t think I’ve seen one either.
Though it’s worth noting that downvotes tend to be front-loaded in time, so something that’s at −5 a little while after posting could easily rise to +6 in only about a week. So your downvotes don’t ‘stop counting’ once the comment is already at −5.
I wonder if an algorithm could be invented to reduce the front-loading in time of negative karma from downvoting that is meant to offset later potential upvotes. Such a thing might have headed off the whole incident in the other thread (he’s stated that he was “ready to fight” out of anger from seeing half his karma gone)
If I’m understanding you correctly, sure. Just truncate all reported net karma scores for comments and posts at zero (while still recording the actual score), and calculate user total karma from reported karma rather than actual.
The suggestion gets made from time to time. Some people think it’s a good idea, others don’t.
More generally, no mechanism that allows a community to communicate what they do and don’t value will serve to prevent people whose contributions the community judges as valueless (or less valuable than they consider appropriate) from being upset by that judgment being communicated.
The question becomes to what degree a given community, acknowledging this, chooses to communicate their value judgments at the potential cost of upsetting people.
That might be an interesting experiment. I’m not confident I can predict what the results would be, given the effect you mention and the large amounts of “corrective voting” I’ve seen.
I imagine the mechanism would immediately apply pending downvotes until it has reached −2, and then apply the rest of pending downvotes either any time it goes above −2 or at some specified rate over time.
But the developer in me is saying that’s a too-complicated system with questionable benefit.
Such a thing might have headed off the whole incident in the other thread (he’s stated that he was “ready to fight” out of anger from seeing half his karma gone)
For reference, the discussed thread is here and User:pleeppleep is the user in question.
“Is “get thicker-skinned about downvoting” an option?”
Not at zero karma, it’s not.
How long have you been lurking here? You seem to have a lot of opinions about how good the existing mechanisms are for someone who hasn’t been commenting for very long.
A couple weeks. Am I really less qualified to examine the current system’s actual effect on new and low-karma users, though?
A couple weeks. Am I really less qualified to examine the current system’s actual effect on new and low-karma users, though?
Yes. As far as I can tell, you don’t have hard data about the impact these things have on usage. Given that, I’m comparing my general impressions gathered over the past 4 years to your general impressions gathered over the past couple weeks.
Providing [even sporadic] explanations for downvotes will allow people who are downvoted for good reasons a clearer way to adjust their behavior.
Exposing downvote reasons to community moderation will allow bad downvoting to be punished and good downvoting to be rewarded (this last one has the additional effect of raising the user’s downvote cap so they can continue making good downvotes.)
What I expect the second one to provide is obvious: remove the problematic incentives discouraging people from providing clarifications if the original post has been downvoted.
I was not describing bulk downvoting that could reasonably be called “karmassassination” or anything like that. This is limited to one subthread. The point is that you’re downvoting someone twice for the same thing for no better reason than that it’s across two posts. It discourages people from answering replies to their posts (and rewards editing answers into the original post [which doesn’t notify the person you’re responding to] or simply not engaging in discussion), which stifles discussion, because then the downvoter (who is not engaging in discussion to explain why they do not like the comments) has an extra opportunity to “legitimately” strike again, even though the downvotes are individually legitimate under the “want to have less posts like this one” theory of why people vote.
tl;dr:
On the other hand, voting on multiple comments in a thread, either because one wishes to see more/fewer threads of that sort, or because one genuinely considers each one to be individually entitled to the vote, is considered perfectly acceptable.
What I am suggesting is that it is considered “perfectly acceptable” in part because people have not fully considered this effect.
Maybe if the votes were allowed but the karma effect reduced?
P.S.
“learn some global lesson like “don’t ever respond to requests for clarification” even if the punisher intended a more narrow lesson like “don’t make comments like this one while responding to requests for clarification”.”
The point is that the punishment is for failing to change your mind. If you continue the discussion with anything but a full retraction, it’s likely that whatever the silent downvoter disliked is not fixed. So, no, I won’t be replying to requests for clarification—people can accept the inconvenience of watching the original post for additions as a cost of the current system.
And it is a global lesson: fewer posts on a topic unpopular enough to draw downvotes always means fewer downvotes, because if you stick to one post the downvoters can’t hit you twice while remaining within the “downvoting rules”.
I don’t see how that’s relevant, I’m talking about responses to requests for clarification. Controlled for original posts that had a negative score—any downvotes that were due to disagreement with someone’s position are obviously unlikely to change with clarification, and the response will get another downvote.
any downvotes that were due to disagreement with someone’s position are obviously unlikely to change with clarification, and the response will get another downvote
You continue to imply that voting behavior is entirely a function of whether voters agree with the commenter’s position. This continues to not match my experience.
It’s certainly possible that you’re correct and that I’m drawing the wrong lesson from my experience, of course.
My assumption is that disagreement is one of several reasons that people downvote, and that people are more likely to volunteer explanations (especially to new users) for the other reasons than for disagreement. Therefore, I assumed that the downvotes I got with no explanation were for disagreement. The one person who provided an alternate theory of why I was getting downvoted denied being one of the downvoters, and when I took his advice and clarified something from an earlier post, the new comment was also downvoted.
When I said I had observed a spoiler being stated “numerous” times in the thread, as evidence that the spoiler policy wasn’t preventing this effectively, someone replied asking for a list of links to specific comments; I replied with nine, and that post was downvoted three times.
When you say “use above” I assume you are referring to TheOtherDave, because my questioning of the democratic principles of Lesswrong Karma were because it was described in response to my comment as democratic.
Ok, but your parent comment exists within a context. It was responding to Random832, who was responding to TheOtherDave’s comment about democracy. I was not solely responding to you, but to your comment with the context of theotherdave’s
Incidentally, from what I’ve seen you do much more advocating for your position than “attempting to explain” it.
I disagree–in most of my discussion with HungryTurtle, neither of us seemed to understand each other’s position and were both getting ‘ugh’ reactions to various surface factors. So the meat of his comments was trying to explain and clarify...with the final result that our diverging philosophies ‘add up to normality’ and we actually don’t disagree on all that much. Would you call that ‘advocating’ or ‘attempting to explain’?
My hypothesis was that he was getting downvotes for the same reason that I was getting ugh reaction–lots of buzzwords that seem to go against everything LessWrong represents. The difference is that when I have an ugh reaction, I like to poke and prod and investigate it, not downvote it and move on.
Is that akin to your model of “soviet russia style censorship”? I’m no expert on politics, but it sounds much more like American-style democracy to me.
I wasn’t aware that in a democracy the you had to first have majority approval to share your ideas on the main stage, or that ideas of the minority could be repressed. I also wasn’t aware that in a democracy the minority is not allowed to critique the majority. Or maybe you weren’t aware that to down vote requires a certain amount of positive Karma. How is any of the above mentioned things democratic? EDIT: There are democratic elements to the Karma system, but there exist within it undemocratic elements.
You can still upvote comments you like and ignore comments you don’t like, no matter how much karma you have. You can still make comments disagreeing with other comments-which to me seems like a much better way of voicing your ideas than a silent downvote.
I believe that the karma cap on making posts (20 karma needed for a top level post) is partly to make sure members understand the vocabulary and concepts used on LessWrong before they start making posts, and partly to keep out spambots.
You can still make comments disagreeing with other comments-which to me seems like a much better way of voicing your ideas than a silent downvote.
I think so to.
I believe that the karma cap on making posts (20 karma needed for a top level post) is partly to make sure members understand the vocabulary and concepts used on LessWrong before they start making posts,
I understand the purpose of it. I just think there are some problems with it.
Incidentally, I’m taking your subsequent rhetoric as confirmation that you did in fact intend the claim that your ideas are being repressed, since you don’t seem likely to explicitly answer that question anytime soon.
I do think the way negative karma works is a type of repression.
OK, thanks for clarifying that.
I infer further, from what you’ve said elsewhere, that it’s a type of repression that works by making some users less able to make comments/posts than others, and some comments less visible to readers than others, and some posts less visible to readers than others. Is that correct?
Assuming it is, I infer you consider it a bad thing for that reason. Is that correct?
Assuming it is, I infer you would consider it a better thing if all comments/posts were equally visible to readers, no matter how many readers considered those comments/posts valueless or valuable. Is that correct?
I am taking your subsequent rhetoric as confirmation that you do in fact agree “are you actually claiming” is a type of applause lights terminology.
I infer further, from what you’ve said elsewhere, that it’s a type of repression that works by making some users less able to make comments/posts than others, and some comments less visible to readers than others, and some posts less visible to readers than others. Is that correct?
Yes.
Assuming it is, I infer you consider it a bad thing for that reason. Is that correct?
No, not exactly. As I told swimmer in theory the karma system is a good idea. I do not think it would be better if all posts were equally visible, I think it would be better if there was a fairer system of down posting ideas.
Not exactly, In theory the idea of monitoring for trolling is good, but in my opinion, the LW karma system fails in practice.
First of all, do you believe that the up-down voting and down voting serves the purpose of filtering well written, interesting ideas? I feel a large portion of voting is based on rhetoric.
If a person uses any terminology that exists outside of the LW community, or uses a LW terminology in a different context, they are down-voted. Is this a valid reason to down vote someone? From what you and other LW members have said, I infer that the reason for down voting in these cases is to create a stable foundation of terminology to limit misunderstanding by limiting the number of accepted definitions of a term. Is that correct?
do you believe that the up-down voting and down voting serves the purpose of filtering well written, interesting ideas?
No, not especially. I think it serves the purpose of allowing filtering posts and comments that other LessWrong users consider valuable. Sometimes they consider stuff valuable because it’s well-written and interesting, yes. Sometimes because it’s funny. Sometimes because they agree with it. Sometimes because it’s engagingly contrarian. Sometimes for other reasons.
I feel a large portion of voting is based on rhetoric.
I would certainly agree with this. I’m not sure what you intend to capture by the contrast between “well-written” and “rhetoric,” though.
If a person uses any terminology that exists outside of the LW community, [..] they are down-voted.
That’s not just false, it’s downright bizarre. I would agree, though, that sometimes terminology is introduced to discussions in ways that people find valueless, and they vote accordingly.
If a person [..] uses a LW terminology in a different context, they are down-voted.
This is sometimes true, and sometimes false, depending (again) on whether the use is considered valuable or valueless.
Is this a valid reason to down vote someone?
Downvoting a comment/post because it does those things in a valueless way (and has no compensating value) is perfectly valid. Downvoting a comment/post because it does those things in a valuable way is not valid.
From what you and other LW members have said, I infer that the reason for down voting in these cases is to create a stable foundation of terminology to limit misunderstanding by limiting the number of accepted definitions of a term. Is that correct?
No, not especially. I would agree that that’s a fine thing, but I’d be really astonished if that were the reason for downvoting in any significant number of cases.
I don’t agree that it was an applause light specifically, but the distinction is relatively subtle and I’m uninterested in defending it, so we can agree it was an applause light for the sake of argument it if that helps you make some broader point. More generally, I agree that it was a rhetorical tactic in a similar class as applause lights.
It’s entirely possible to get karma by being critical of majority opinions here, if your points are well made. XiXiDu, for example, has 5777 karma at the time of this posting, and most of that has come from comments criticizing majority opinions here. Conversely, you can make a large number of comments that agree with majority positions here and not get any karma at all, if other members don’t feel you’re making any meaningful contribution.
Generally speaking, I find that simple assertions which run directly counter to mainstream positions here will tend to be downvoted, comments that run counter to mainstream positions with explanation, but which are poorly argued and/or written tend to be downvoted, and comments which run counter to mainstream positions which are moderately to well argued tend to be upvoted. Many people, myself included, will upvote comments whose conclusions they do not necessarily agree with, if they think it encourages useful discourse.
It’s probably hard not to be offended if a comment you’ve put thought into starts getting downvoted, but rather than assuming that the community is trying to stomp down dissenting views, I suggest adding a comment, or editing your original, to ask people to explain their reasons for downvoting. At least some people will probably answer.
Many people, myself included, will upvote comments whose conclusions they do not necessarily agree with, if they think it encourages useful discourse.
I’m more likely to upvote comments I disagree with, partly because I think I have more to learn from those ideas and I want to encourage the poster to keep posting.
I have an additional impulse to upvote well argued comments I disagree with, but I think it’s largely because I’m subconsciously trying to reinforce my own self perception as a fair and impartial person.
Is this a false overstatement, or is it merely hyperbole?
It uses ‘voting’, it correlates to some extent with the collective will of the community, and more than one person gets a say. It sounds much more democratic than a banhammer-wielding moderator and no karma, which is the default for web forums. If it seems “by no means” democratic to you, we definitely need to taboo “democratic”.
Is this a false overstatement, or is it merely hyperbole?
It uses ‘voting’, it correlates to some extent with the collective will of the community, and more than one person gets a say. It sounds much more democratic than a banhammer-wielding moderator and no karma, which is the default for web forums. If it seems “by no means” democratic to you, we definitely need to taboo “democratic”.
I’m no expert on politics, but it sounds much more like American-style democracy to me.
Really? There isn’t an efficient system for spending money to reliably buy votes in place. Doesn’t sound all that typically “American”. Or was there some other kind of message that “American-style democracy” is intended to convey as a diff over “democracy”.
Mostly, the phrase “American-style democracy” was intended to preserve structural parallelism with “soviet russia style censorship”.
But you’re right about the lack of an efficient system for buying karma. Given how much attention we collectively pay to karma scores, I wonder if this is a potentially valuable fundraising mechanism for SI?
Depending on what scale you choose, you can say humans have had a pretty big impact (on the earth itself, comparable to a big extinction event from the past), or a very small impact (the earth is a very, very tiny fraction of everything that’s out there). We’ve had a big impact on ourselves and our own future options, since right now we live on Earth and that’s where we’re doing all our messing-stuff-up, but I guess I think of reality as being a bit bigger than that.
I think reality is bigger than the earth, and our impact on reality is questionable. BUT when I say our reality I am not talking about all of reality but the portion of it that defines our existence. Personally, I find realities on the other side of the universe to be worth a small small allotment of my resources, or humanities for that matter. I do not think it is a flat out waste of time, but I think that at this stage in human development the amount of consciousness, resources, and man power that should be spent theorizing about or basing decisions on reality that exists beyond our reality is minute.
EDIT: So I guess my response is that i agree, but I think that it would be pretty stupid to pick a scale bigger than the milky way galaxy, and that is being generous. Do you disagree?
No, but it would be fundamentally altered. In my mind,
If you don’t mind I will use an analogy to more precisely explain my thoughts. The reality humans interact with in the analogy is an ocean. I don’t see humans as fish in the ocean. That would imply a fundamental separateness; that humans come into interaction with their reality, but are not a part of it. If you remove a fish from the ocean, the ocean for the most part is still the ocean. I see humans more as the salt in the ocean. Not as synthesized as say the hydrogen and oxygen are, but salt is pretty thoroughly mixed into the ocean. To remove all salt from the ocean would have such huge ramifications that what would remain would no longer be “an ocean” in traditional terms.
So no, I do not think that if humans disappear the universe disappears. I do think the portion of the universe we affect is largely defined by our presence, and that the removable of this presence would so alter its constitution that it would not be the reality we think of as reality today.
If humanity is as integral to our reality as you describe, then I am confused why our beliefs about how reality works don’t totally control how reality actually works. That is, I would expect human beliefs to have as much causal effect on objects as external forces like gravity and magnetism. You are study of the world shows that this isn’t so. In short, many people think it is a fundamental physical law that objects in motion eventually come to a stop. That’s their ordinary experience, but it is easy to show that it is totally wrong.
In general, scientific predictions about what will happen to physical objects in the future is not related to the consensus people have about what would happen (in other words, people are scientifically illiterate). Despite how unintuitive it seems, nothing can travel faster than light, and humans are descended from monkeys.
Improving humanity’s ability to make predictions about the future is the empirical project in a nutshell. That’s the source of the pushback in this post. If it turns out to be the case that there is no objective reality, external to human experience, it follows pretty closely that the modern scientific project is pointless. In short, if the world is not real (existing external to humanity), what’s the point in studying it?
Wouldn’t you say oxygen is integral to the current reality of earth? That does not mean that the current reality of earth is shaped by the will of oxygen. Saying that humanity is integral to the constitution of our reality is different from saying humanity consciously defines the constitution of its reality. Right?
Do you think that, say, 100 million years ago (when there were mammals and plants pretty similar to what we know now on Earth, but no humans), that reality was significantly different?
I’m not saying I disagree with you. An Earth with humans on it has a very different potential future path than an Earth with nothing more complicated than squirrels. But the current Earth with humans on it is only a bit changed (hole in ozone layer, mild-so-far global warming which may or may not be human-caused), and outside of the solar system, we’ve hardly changed anything as of yet.
ETA: [goes to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life#Cenozoic_Era] Wow, apparently there were no butterflies or grass 100 Myr ago. I would have never guessed they were that recent.
Grass is recent? That I didn’t know. Butterflies I would expect to be fairly recent since they are so vulnerable to evolving themselves to extinction.
No offense, but I would suggest reading some environmental studies literature, or finding a friend in the field. We have changed a staggering amount of the earth’s surface level topography and ecosystems. Will we ever “destroy the earth” probably not. Humans lack the power to literally destroy the earth. Could we destroy the existing biosphere and the majority of life it supports? Yes, that is within our power, and in fact we are actively moving towards such a reality.
Yes I do. Current extinction rates are the same as characterizes the Big Five episodes of mass extinction in the fossil record. Obviously it is not unanimous, but humans are the primary factor in this. In my opinion, the fact that the human impact on Earth’s biosphere is the equivalent of one of The five biggest episodes of mass extinction in the history of the planet is pretty good sign that we are making a significant difference compared to the mammals 100 million year ago.
That was my first attempt at Lesswrong link posting . ^_^ one small step for me!
I spend sizable chunks of time trying figure out how to deliver (what I feel are) just revolutionary ideas. Each time I find myself back on a computer I take a quick second to eagerly check if any one of these gems has earned me some Karma points. Ironically, in over 20 posts, the one that gets me any positive recognition is the one quick mental fart in the bunch that makes no real contribution to the running dialogue.
Haha for a community of rationalists the karma here has an odd rhetorical and aesthetic after taste. ^)^
cheers
I upvoted it :) Because it made me smile, so upvoting it was more the equivalent of liking someone’s status on Facebook than anything. I don’t think it’s really fair that you haven’t gotten more upvotes though, since someone is upvoting most of my comments in this discussion, and your points are just as detailed and well explained as mine...unless that’s you upvoting, in which case maybe I should scratch your back in return and upvote all of yours?
Haha I have been up voting you some. Not all the time, you definitely have other secret supporters, but some. But don’t up vote me now just because of that. I don’t want an up vote out of social obligation. And I didn’t post the comment about my mental fart to get up votes. I just think it is interesting how the karma system here works. To me it is a stark contradiction of the group mission. I don’t mean that to be mean.
So no, I only want up votes if my words genuinely spark in your mind as your read them. I could use a good back scratch though, no lie.
Why do you think that is?
Why did you change your post here?
?
If you’re referring to this comment, I see no evidence that I changed it, nor do I recall changing it, so I suspect your premise is false.
If you’re referring to some other comment, I don’t know.
EDIT: Edited for demonstration purposes.
Ok, then I probably made a mistake when I clicked on my new message from you. Sorry about that.
An asterisk appears to the right of the date when a post has been edited. (See grandparent for an example)
what does see grandparent mean?
The parent post of the parent post, in this case meaning that comment, which you’ll note has an asterisk next to the date, because it has been edited.
When you reply to a comment, the comment you are replying to is called the parent, and the comment that it replies to is called the grandparent.
I can’t tell if you really want to hear the theory I have on this matter, or if this was just a sarcastic jab at the fact that maybe my ideas are not as wonderful as I think they are.
That’s understandable.
I’m curious as to your theory on the matter, but I also suspect that your ideas aren’t as revolutionary as you think they are.
Yes, I probably worded that wrong. Revolutionary to this community. There is a significant body of minds, research, and literature that my ideas arise from. So to just say that they are “revolutionary ideas” was probably too vague. Revolutions happen in context. And I think the particular nexus of thought I am nestled in contains some attributes that if adopted would be revolutionary to this community.
That said, I actually am not looking for revolution in your community. I like your community. I just like having discussions like this one. I feel it keeps my thoughts and writing sharp. I enjoy it, and there is always the possibility that I will undergo a revolution!
P.S -Dave, more than talking about theories about your community I am interested in continuing our talk in the other post about the overall purpose of my essay .
Plausible hypothesis: All the other comments made a negative epistemic contribution and any upvotes you got would be quickly removed by those who dislike the pollution. The ‘mental fart’ doesn’t do any epistemic damage so altruistic punishers leave it alone.
I don’t like being downvoted either.
Could you further elaborate what you mean by a negative epistemic contribution?
To me it sounds like you are saying the ideas I am suggesting disagree with some intended epistemic regime and that there are agents attempting to weed them out?
No, I don’t either, but what I really don’t like is reasons I am being down voted or up voted. it would be one thing if I was trolling, but I don’t think a person should be down voted for having a real disagreement and attempting to explain their position. It is especially disturbing to think that your hypothesis is right, and I am being down voted because the ideas I am trying to express have been labeled as ‘pollution.’ Doesn’t that strike you as very akin to soviet russia style censorship?
People often complain about getting downvoted, attributing the downvotes to ironically irrational voters. Sometimes these accusations are correct (naturally, all instances where it is me that is so complaining fit this category!). More often the comments really did deserve to be downvoted and the complainer would be best served wizening up and taking a closer look at their commenting style.
Of those comments that do deserve downvoting the fault tends to lie in one or more of: behaving like an asshole, being wrong and belligerent about it or using argument styles that are irrational or disengenuous. I expect I would have noticed if you were behaving like an asshole (and I haven’t), which leaves the remainder, all things which could be described as a ‘negative epistemic contribution’.
I don’t make the claim that all your comments are bad. I haven’t read all of them—and accordingly I have not voted on all of them. I did read (and downvote) some. If I recall the comments were a bunch of rhetorical and semantic gymanstics trying to support a blatant contradiction and make it sound deep rather than like a mistake.
You make in the ancestor a challenge to the judgement of the community, asserting that their downvotes are wrong and your comments are worthy of upvotes. Usually claims of that form are mistaken and what I have seen suggests that this case is no exception. There is little shame in that—different things are appreciated in different communities and you are relatively unfamiliar with the things that are appreciated in this particular one. It is difficult to jump from one social hierarchy to another and maintain the same status (including level of confidence and unyielding assertiveness with respect to expressions of ideas). Usually a small down time is required while local conventions are learned. And the local conventions here really are more epistemically rational than wherever you came from (if the content of your comments is representative).
If you care about karma or the public sentiment that it represents then write comments that you expect people will appreciate. If you don’t care about karma then write comments according to whatever other criteria you do care about.
Ok so we agree I am not belligerent. I don’t think it is possible for you to tell someone that they are disingenuous, so that one is out too. All that leaves is the claim that my writing uses an irrational style.
If you are going to make a claim that I do not use rational styles of argumentation, why do you not have to yourself use rational styles of argumentation? It is not rational to make a claim without providing supporting evidence. You cannot just say that I am making blatant contradictions or performing “semantic gymnastics” without undertaking the burden of proof. You make an argument so that I can counter it, you can’t just libel me because you have deemed that to be what is logical. There is nothing rational about this method of writing.
Agreed that making a statement and not giving any supporting evidence doesn’t qualify as “rational.” I actually haven’t found the quality of your argument to be low, most of the time, but I’ll try to dredge up some examples of what I think wedrifid is talking about.
The standard mindset on LessWrong is that words are useful because they are specific and thus transmit the same concept between two people. Some words are more abstract than others (for example, ‘beauty’ can never be defined as specifically as ‘apple’), but the idea that we should embrace more possible definitions of a word goes deeply against LessWrong philosophy. It makes language less clear; a speaker will have to specify that “no, I’m talking about paradox2, not paradox1.” In which case you might as well have 2 different words for the 2 different concepts in the first place. I think most people on LW would count this as a negative epistemic contribution
This kind of comparison is very no-no on LessWrong, unless you very thoroughly explain all the similarities and justify why you think it’s a good comparison. See Politics is the Mind-Killer.
Comes across as belligerant.
I don’t think there are really that many places where you had ‘bad’ arguments. The main thing is that you’re presenting a viewpoint very different from the established one here, and you’re using non-LW vocabulary (or vocabulary that is used here, but you’re using it differently as per your field of study), and when someone disagrees you start arguing about definitions, and so people pattern-match to ‘bad argument.’
I do that all the time. There seems to be nothing in the meaning of the word that means it cannot be applied to another.
That isn’t true. It is simply a different form of communication. Description is different from argumentative persuasion. It is not (necessarily) irrational to do the former.
In the context the statement serves as an explanation for the downvotes. It is assumed that you or any readers familiar with the context will be able to remember the details. In fact this is one of those circumstances where “disingenuous” applies. There are multiple pages of conversation discussing your contradictions already and so pretending that there is not supporting evidence available is not credible.
NO! “Burden of proof” is for courts and social battles, not thinking.
This isn’t debate club either!
Yes, with respect to libel, the aforementioned ‘burden of proof’ becomes relevant. Of course this isn’t libel, or a court. Consider that I would not have explained to you why (I perceive) your comments were downvoted if you didn’t bring them up and make implications about the irrationality of the voters and community. If you go around saying “You downvoted me therefore you suck!” then it drastically increases the chances that you will receive a reply “No, the downvotes are right because your comments sucked!”
So many people don’t seem to get this! It’s infuriating.
I wonder if it’s just word association with Traditional Rationality. People think making persuasive arguments has anything to do with what we’re doing here.
Yes, making persuasive arguments is often instrumentally useful, and so in that sense is a ‘rationality skill’ - but cooking and rock climbing are also ‘rationality skills’ in that sense.
Yeah, it comes up a lot.
My usual working theory is that smart people often learn that winning the argument game is a way for smart people to gain status, especially within academia and within communities of soi-disant smart people (aka mensa), and thus come to expect any community of smart people will use the argument game as a primary way to earn and retain status. They identify LW as a community of smart people, so they begin playing the argument game in order to establish their status.
And when playing the argument game results in _losing_status instead, they feel betrayed and defensive.
Never encountered this before. Is it usually italicized?
I don’t usually italicize it, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to encounter it italicized, especially in print. I imagine it depends one whether one considers it an English word borrowed from a foreign language (which I do) or a foreign phrase (which one plausibly could).
It means “so-called” or “self-proclaimed”.
We should probably just use those phrases directly then, rather than excluding possible readers without adding any informational content.
(On that note, someone at an LW meetup I went to recently made a good point: why do we say “counterfactual” instead of just “made-up”?)
Buckley’s response to this sentiment is apposite.
Login required. Summarize?
How odd! When I went there through google it didn’t ask for a login, but when I follow the link it does.
Anyway, summarized, his point is that the benefits to the right audience of using the right word at the right time outweigh the costs to everyone else either looking it up and learning a new word, getting the general meaning from context, or not understanding and ignoring it. But like much of Buckley, the original text is worth reading if you enjoy language.
Googling “Buckley eristic lapidary November” should get you a link that works.
Nonsense. More words is better. Nuance is good. Words are trivially easy to look up.
I didn’t ask what the word meant, because by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed”.
What is the additional nuance in “soi-disant” that’s not in “self-described”?
Agreed that more words are better–more possible information can be conveyed. However, it sounds like you’re better than the average reader at grasping the meaning of words from context. (Knowing French, I can guess what ‘soi-disant’ means...having no idea, I don’t know if I would have deduced it from the context of just that one comment.)
I did not deduce it from context—I looked it up. Using the Internet.
It’s the obvious thing to do if it’s after 1998.
Somehow in your comment it seemed like you meant you’d figured it our yourself...rereading it, I don’t know why I thought that.
It’s not unreasonable to infer from by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed” that thomblake didn’t interrupt his reading of the comment to go perform some other task (e.g., looking the word up on google).
I mean, if someone said about an essay that by the time they were done reading it they had a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, I would probably infer that the essay explained quantum mechanics, even though they might mean they started reading it in 2009, put it down unfinished to go study QM for three years, then found the unfinished essay (which was in fact about gardenias) and finished reading it.
I sympathize with this suggestion. But at the same time, I do enjoy learning new words.
As I understand it, “counterfactual” originates from history, it means, originally, when historians analyze what would happen if some particular thing had gone differently.
Really? I always thought it came from logic/semantics: a “counterfactual conditional” is one of the form “If X had happened, Y would have”, and there is a minor industry in finding truth conditions for them.
Well, I heard it first relating to history.
Hm, so I guess the modern term would be “alternate history fic”? :-)
No, the difference is between serious historical studies of what would likely have happened, vs people who make up new characters who had no significance OTL to tell a good story.
To expand on this—a counterfactual might predict “and then we would still have dirigibles today”, or not, if asking “what if the Hindenburg disaster had not occurred.” It would probably NOT predict who would be president in 2012, neither would it predict that in a question wholly unrelated to air travel or lighter-than-air technology. An alternate history fiction story might need the president for the plot, and it might go with the current president or it might go with Jack Ryan. An alternate history timeline is somewhere in the middle, but in general will ask “what change could have made [some radically different way the modern world looks like]” rather than “what can we predict would have happened if [some change happened]” and refrain from speculation on stuff that can’t be predicted to any reasonable probability.
The line is also to some extent definable as between historians and fiction authors, though these can certainly overlap particularly in the amateur side of things.
Right, I should have mentioned that in grandparent. Thanks!
Let me rephrase, it is irrational to make a declarative statement about the inner workings of another person’s mind, seeing as there is no way for one person to fully understand the mental state of another.
You talk to me about semantic gymnastics? No, it is not necessarily irrational to be descriptive without providing evidence. Author’s of fiction can be descriptive and do not need to provide evidence, as well as several other mediums of writing. But come on, do you really think that if you attack my writing and intentions you don’t need evidence and that is ok?
Wedrifid, if you do not think that it is the obligation of a rational statement to provide some evidence or reason for justification of its claim, then I do not know what to say to you.
Anyone who read my comments and interpreted them as me saying “you down voted me therefore you suck!” is vilifying me. I made a comment about a time I got up voted and how I did not understand why out of everything I wrote that sentence was deemed more rational. I never insulted anyone, or was demeaning in anyway.
You are blatantly ignoring the direct reference to the relevant evidence that I provided in the grandparent. I repeat that reference now—read your inbox, scroll back until you find the dozen or so messages saying ‘this is just a contradiction!’ or equivalent. I repeat with extra emphasis that your denial of any evidence is completely incredible.
Any benefit of a doubt that you are communicating in good faith is rapidly eroding.
No.
(Leaving aside the problems with declaring a course of action “irrational” without reference to a goal...)
There is no fact that I am 100% certain of. Any knowledge about the world is held at some probability between 0 and 1, exclusive. We make declarative statements of facts despite the necessary uncertainty. Statements about the inner workings of another person’s mind are in no way special with that respect; I can make declarative statements about your mind, and I can make declarative statements about my mind, and in neither case am I going to be completely certain. I can be wrong about your motivations, and you can be wrong about your motivations.
If you make a claim about the character of another person or the state of reality do you or do you not need some evidence to support it?
Isn’t being rational about being less wrong, so if some declarative statements can be wrong wouldn’t it be rational to avoid making them?
I can make claims about anything without supporting it, whether or not it’s about someone’s character. The moon is made of green cheese. George Washington was more akratic than my mother. See, there, I did it twice.
It can often be rational to do so. For example, if someone trustworthy offers me a million dollars for making the claim “two plus two equals five”, I will assert “two plus two equals five” and accept my million dollars.
I’m confused that you do not understand this.
If it helps resolve the confusion at all, my working theory is that HT believes unjustified and negative claims have been made about his/her character, and is trying to construct a formal structure that allows such claims to be rejected on formal grounds, rather than by evaluation of available evidence.
Thanks. That helps if true.
FWIW, I tend to respond to comments ignoring the context, as my main goal here is to improve the quality of the site by correcting minor mistakes (aside from cracking jokes and discussing Harry Potter).
Pretty sure he means epistemically irrational, not instrumentally.
That he’s wrong about it, for the reasons you’ve listed, is another matter.
Probably. But I’m finding myself more and more in the “epistemic rationality is a case of instrumental rationality” camp, though not to any particular effect personally since I rate epistemic rationality very highly for its own sake.
I understand what you are saying; you are saying that for the speaker of the statement it is not irrational, because the false statement might meet their motives. Or in other words, that rationality is completely dependent on the motives of the actor. Is this the rationality that your group idealizes? That as long as what I say or do works towards my personal motives it is rational? So if I want to convince the world that God is real, it is rational to make up whatever lies I see fit to delegitimize other belief systems?
So religious zealots are rational because they have a goal that their lies and craziness is helping them achieve? That is what you are arguing.
If someone told you that the moon was made of cheese, being a rational person, without providing any evidence of the fact, if they had no reason to believe that, they just believed it, you would think they were being irrational. And you know it. You just want to pick a fight.
In the sense I think you mean it, yes. Two equally rational actors with different motives will perform different acts.
Yes.
If that’s the most effective way to convince the world that God is real, and you value the world being convinced that God is real, yes.
Not necessarily, in that religious zealots don’t necessarily have such goals. But yes, if a religious zealot who in fact values things that are in fact best achieved through lies and craziness chooses to engage in those lies and craziness, that’s a rational act in the sense we mean it here.
Sure, that’s most likely true.
You may be right about thomblake’s motives, though I find it unlikely. That said, deciding how likely I consider it is my responsibility. You are not obligated to provide evidence for it.
Thanks—much more concise than my reply. Though I disagree about this bit:
for reasons I’ve stated in a sibling.
(nods) I was taking the “if they had no reason to believe that, they just believed it” part of the problem specification literally. (e.g., it’s not a joke, etc.)
Aha—I glossed over that bit as irrelevant since the scenario is someone saying some words, which is clearly a case for instrumental rather than epistemic rationality. I should probably have read the “someone told you” as the irrelevant bit and answered as though we were talking about epistemic rationality.
(nods) Of course in the real world you’re entirely correct. That said, I find a lot of thought experiments depend on positing a situation I can’t imagine any way of getting into and asking what follows from there.
Yes.
See the twelfth virtue:
.
No, I would generally not think someone was “being irrational” without specific reference to their motivations. If I must concern myself with the fulfillment of someone else’s utility function, it would usually take the form of “You should not X in order to Z because Y will more efficiently Z.” ETA: I would more likely think that their statement was a joke, and failing that think that it’s false and try to correct it. In case anyone’s curious, “the moon is made of green cheese” was a paradigm of a ridiculous, unproveable statement before humans went to the moon; and “green cheese” in this context means “new cheese”, not the color green.
No, I’d rather be working on my dissertation, but I have a moral obligation to correct mistakes and falsehoods posted on this site.
Correct. As noted on another branch of this comment tree, this interpretation characterizes “instrumental rationality”, though a similar case could be made for “epistemic rationality”.
That is not what I was arguing. If I understand you correctly however, you mean to say that what I’m arguing applies equally well to that case.
The important part of that statement is “X is rational”, where X is a human. Inasmuch as that predicate indicates that the subject behaves rationally most of the time, I would deny that it should be applied to any human. Humans are exceptionally bad at rationality.
That said, if a person X decided that course of action Y was the most efficient way to fulfill their utility function, then Y is rational by definition. (Of course, this applies equally well to non-persons with utility functions). Even if Y = “lies and craziness” or “religious belief” or “pin an aubergine to your lapel”.
That’s a difficult empirical question, and outside my domain of expertise. You might want to consult an expert on lying, though I’d first question whether the subgoal of convincing the world that God is real, really advances your overall goals.
I think the idea that you are grasping for (and which I don’t necessarily agree with) is that calling someone disingenuous is a dark side tool.
Is it irrational to call a statement a lie? As I had understood the word, “disingenuous” is a fancy way to say “lying”.
Yes it is irrational to say something is a lie if you have no way of knowing it is a lie or not. Is this incorrect?
(I don’t suppose you’d be enlightened if I said “Yes, that’s incorrect”)
Do you consider it irrational to say the sky is blue when you are in a room with no window?
Tell me honestly, do you really think that it is rational to make a declarative statement about something you know nothing about?
No, because there is reason and evidence to support the statement that the sky is blue. The most obvious of which is that it has been blue your entire life.
No offense, but your example is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. I am not saying that no statement can be made without evidence (this is Wedrifid’s semantic twist). My statement is that it is impossible for a person to directly know the subjective experience of another person’s consciousness, and that it is irrational to say that you know when someone is being insincere or not.
I think at this point I have to ask when you consider it to be rational to make a declarative statement, and what is “nothing” vs “enough”. And in particular, why you must have direct knowledge of the subjective experience to say they are being insincere.
If someone is here, on a site filled with reasonablly intelligent people who understand logic, and demonstrates elsewhere that they are reasonably intelligent and understand logic, and in one particular argument make obviously logically inconsistent statements, I don’t need their state of mind to say they’re being disingenuous. I don’t know how well that maps to this situation or what has been claimed about it.
This does not apply to this situation.
It’s fairly meaningless to call something “irrational” without reference to a particular goal.
No, it means lacking in sincerity, frankness, or candor—it usually refers more to attitude or style than content.
For example, strictly speaking a smile can’t be a lie, but it can be disingenuous.
Pretending to be truth-seeking when one is actually trolling is also disingenuous, but might not involve any explicit lies.
Well, maybe it’s a bit too fancy to be stretched into “lying”. But the point is one of dishonesty, of a difference between actual intent and visible signs, and, what’s relevant here, it does imply a model of someone’s actual intentions (for “disingenuous”), or actual beliefs (for “lie”).
I don’t agree with HT that it’s irrational (his basis for this seems to imply that any declarative statement about anything ever is irrational), which is why I drew a comparison between it and something I assumed he would be unlikely to consider irrational in the sense he meant when saying it of calling someone disingenuous.
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.
This may make things clearer.
It does not seem to be at all relevant. Which surprised me. I followed your link because I saw it was to the “not insane unsane” post which has a certain similarity to the rational/not-rational subject. Instead I can only assume you are trying to make some sort of petty personal insinuation—try as I might I can’t see any other point you could be making that isn’t a plain non-sequitur.
(I am left with the frustrating temptation to delete the referent despite considering it a useful or at least interesting contribution. The potential for any given comment to be used out of context can be limiting!)
I must admit that history was never my strong suit. In Soviet Russia was ‘censorship’ a euphemism for “Sometimes when your peers think what you are saying is silly they give indications of disapproval”? I thought it was something more along the lines of:
Done by the authorities, not by the democratic action of your peers.
Involves stopping you from being able to say stuff and the confiscation or destruction of materials containing ideas they don’t want spread.
Some sort of harm is done to you. Maybe beatings. Perhaps a little killing of you and or your family. Gulags may be involved somehow.
It would seem that if the voting pattern you have experienced represents a failure mode of some kind that it is a decidedly democratic failure mode, not a communist one.
The rule of thumb here about votes is “downvote what you want less of, upvote what you want more of.” Everybody gets one vote. (Modulo cheaters who create sock-puppets, of course.)
Is that akin to your model of “soviet russia style censorship”? I’m no expert on politics, but it sounds much more like American-style democracy to me.
Incidentally, from what I’ve seen you do much more advocating for your position than “attempting to explain” it.
If you want to advocate, go ahead, but I would prefer you label it honestly.
“Everybody gets one vote. (Modulo cheaters who create sock-puppets, of course.)” Also modulo people who take a proportionally large karma loss from serial downvoters.
Why is it that a minimum karma is required to downvote, when downvoting does not entail an expenditure of karma?
Yes, you’re right: also modulo people who have exceeded their downvote limit, which is tied to their karma score.
Downvoting several times hides posts from most readers, and so is potentially destructive. Destructive powers are not handed out to new members of the community for various reasons. For example, if there was no minimum karma requirement, then new folks could seriously wreck the site by hiding what members of the community think is “good content”.
For a possibly-related post, see well-kept gardens die by pacifism, which is in favor of more downvoting behavior but was posted just before the downvote cap was introduced.
I actually meant my post as an argument in favor of a karma cost to downvoting, not an opposition to a minimum karma requirement.
(re the other thing, I’m pretty sure HungryTurtle’s use of “democratic” was a rebuttal to TheOtherDave’s “Everybody gets one vote” and “sounds like democracy” applause lights)
Ah. I’m genearlly against a karma cost to downvoting, for basically the reasons outlined in well kept gardens die by pacifism—people read a loss of karma as “punishment” and should not be punished for helping to curate.
That said, I’m not very strongly against it, as I’ve seen it used effectively on Q&A sites like Stack Overflow, and I think being emotionally tied to high karma scores is silly.
ETA:
Yeah, I figured that out after, but it just seemed like a non-sequitur as a reply to my comment.
I too see downvoting as an altruistic service.
I’m not too against it myself either. If I start running out of my 19k I’ll post some Rationalists Quotes or something.
Yeah, I was going to make a comment about how the karma system is easy enough to game, but then I realized that by “game” I meant “write high-quality posts about rationality”. Rewriting a Wikipedia article about a cognitive bias we haven’t covered yet is probably worth about 500 karma. 1000 if it contains actionable material.
Loss of karma is a punishment. It only seems like it’s not when yours is high enough to isolate you from the actual effects and any realistic chance of having it wiped out over a single disagreement. Having it cost karma to downvote would make people think twice before downvoting a post that is already out of view, or downvoting all of someone’s posts in a subthread below a post that is already out of view.
The current system encourages piling on.
(EDIT: replaced “everyone’s posts” with “all of someone’s posts”, original wording was a mistake)
It doesn’t seem to me like I would regard it as punishment even if someone could wipe out all my karma at once, and I would not downvote less if it cost me karma to downvote (assuming that was done instead of and equivalently to the downvote cap).
After about 5 minutes of thought...
I am .85+ confident that replacing the downvote cap with a policy of spending karma to downvote would result in the total number of users issuing at least one downvote in a given month dropping by at least 50%, and .6+ confident of it dropping by at least 75%.
I am less confident about what effect it would have on the downvoting patterns of users who continue to issue at least one downvote. Call it (.2) no measurable effect, (.3) increased downvote rate, (.5) decreased rate, just to put some lines in the sand.
None of that sounds blatantly unreasonable to me.
Do you think that between the detrimental effects of giving people angry about legitimate downvotes a target, and the beneficial effects of making people accountable for actual misuse of downvoting, making vote information publicly available would be a net benefit or net harm? (if downvoting itself is a good thing, wouldn’t people be rewarded in their standing in the community if people saw them making good downvotes?)
What about the effect of being able to downvote someone multiple times in a single subthread (with real effects on their karma) discouraging people from responding to requests for clarification? I know I’m not going to make that mistake again after getting burned.
A few related but distinct things here.
I expect making vote information public would change (>95% of) users’ processes for deciding whether to vote, introducing significantly more consideration for the signaling effects of being seen to upvote or downvote a comment/post, and therefore proportionally less consideration for the desire to have more or fewer comments/posts like that one. I expect that, in turn, to reduce the overall emphasis on post/comment quality, which would likely make this site less valuable to me.
Bulk upvoting/downvoting like you describe is a trickier business. It often seems that people do so without really evaluating the comments they are voting on, as a way of punishing individuals. The term “karmassassination” is sometimes used around here to refer to that practice, and it’s frowned upon. On the other hand, voting on multiple comments in a thread, either because one wishes to see more/fewer threads of that sort, or because one genuinely considers each one to be individually entitled to the vote, is considered perfectly acceptable. It is, of course, difficult to automate a system that allows one but not the other.
Thinking about it now, enforcing a delay period between downvotes… say, preventing me from issuing more than one downvote in a 30-second period… might be a good modification.
A common problem with positive punishment as a training mechanism is that subjects overgeneralize on the target… e.g., learn some global lesson like “don’t ever respond to requests for clarification” even if the punisher intended a more narrow lesson like “don’t make comments like this one while responding to requests for clarification”. A (positive reinforcement plus negative punishment) training program, where undesirable behavior is ignored and desired behavior is rewarded, tends to work better, but requires significant self-discipline on the part of the trainer. When the training responsibility is distributed, this is difficult to manage. On pubilc forums like this one, I’ve never seen it implemented successfully, someone always ends up rewarding the undesirable behavior.
What about randomly (1 time in 10, say) requiring downvotes to be accompanied with an explanation (which will be posted as a comment, exposed to downvotes by the rest of the community if it’s a bad reason, and upvotes if it is a good one)?
What about allowing a post to be marked as “response to clarification request” and not subject to voting by anyone but the person it is in reply to?
In the face of such a mechanism, I would surely protest it by posting a minimal comment along with the downvote, and also deleting it if that’s an option. Curation already feels somewhat like work; it doesn’t need to get harder.
Some folks actually won’t vote on anything in a thread they’ve commented on for neutrality reasons, and the last bit there seems inharmonious with that.
Is “get thicker-skinned about downvoting” an option?
How long have you been lurking here? You seem to have a lot of opinions about how good the existing mechanisms are for someone who hasn’t been commenting for very long.
I haven’t seen a credible argument how downvoting a post that’s already at −11, or one that’s under several layers of collapsed posts, is “curation”.
I observe that the line you’re quoting was in response to your suggestion about the proposed required-explanation-for-downvote feature, which was not being proposed in the context of a post that was already at −11.
I infer that either you lost track of the context and genuinely believed thomblake was responding in that context, or you intentionally substituted one context for another for some purpose, presumably to make thomblake seem wrong and you seem right by contrast.
The former is a more charitable assumption, so with some misgivings, I am making it.
I was responding to the general idea that downvoting is “curation”. I don’t see why the specific context is necessary for that. Are you suggesting he wouldn’t have said the same thing in the other context? That posts already at or below −2 and posts in collapsed subthreads get downvoted shows that people downvote with non-curation purposes. Maybe the site would benefit from an explanation of what purposes they do have.
No. I do not generally check whether a comment is in a collapsed subthread before downvoting it. I downvote low-quality comments. It is more efficient.
If someone says that food is tasty and I reply “I don’t see how you can consider durian fruit tasty” I have gone from the general context (food) to a specific context (durian fruit).
In much the same way, if someone says downvoting is curation and I reply “well, nobody’s explained how downvoting a post that’s already at −11 is ‘curation’” I have gone from the general context (downvoting) to a specific (downvoting highly downvoted comments).
I would consider it reasonable, if I did either of those things, for an observer to conclude that I’d changed the context intentionally, in order to make it seem as though the speaker had said something I could more compellingly disagree with.
I don’t think I’ve seen one either.
Though it’s worth noting that downvotes tend to be front-loaded in time, so something that’s at −5 a little while after posting could easily rise to +6 in only about a week. So your downvotes don’t ‘stop counting’ once the comment is already at −5.
I wonder if an algorithm could be invented to reduce the front-loading in time of negative karma from downvoting that is meant to offset later potential upvotes. Such a thing might have headed off the whole incident in the other thread (he’s stated that he was “ready to fight” out of anger from seeing half his karma gone)
If I’m understanding you correctly, sure. Just truncate all reported net karma scores for comments and posts at zero (while still recording the actual score), and calculate user total karma from reported karma rather than actual.
The suggestion gets made from time to time. Some people think it’s a good idea, others don’t.
More generally, no mechanism that allows a community to communicate what they do and don’t value will serve to prevent people whose contributions the community judges as valueless (or less valuable than they consider appropriate) from being upset by that judgment being communicated.
The question becomes to what degree a given community, acknowledging this, chooses to communicate their value judgments at the potential cost of upsetting people.
That might be an interesting experiment. I’m not confident I can predict what the results would be, given the effect you mention and the large amounts of “corrective voting” I’ve seen.
I imagine the mechanism would immediately apply pending downvotes until it has reached −2, and then apply the rest of pending downvotes either any time it goes above −2 or at some specified rate over time.
But the developer in me is saying that’s a too-complicated system with questionable benefit.
For reference, the discussed thread is here and User:pleeppleep is the user in question.
Not at zero karma, it’s not.
A couple weeks. Am I really less qualified to examine the current system’s actual effect on new and low-karma users, though?
Yes. As far as I can tell, you don’t have hard data about the impact these things have on usage. Given that, I’m comparing my general impressions gathered over the past 4 years to your general impressions gathered over the past couple weeks.
What do you expect the results of those changes to be?
Providing [even sporadic] explanations for downvotes will allow people who are downvoted for good reasons a clearer way to adjust their behavior.
Exposing downvote reasons to community moderation will allow bad downvoting to be punished and good downvoting to be rewarded (this last one has the additional effect of raising the user’s downvote cap so they can continue making good downvotes.)
What I expect the second one to provide is obvious: remove the problematic incentives discouraging people from providing clarifications if the original post has been downvoted.
OK. Thanks for clarifying that.
I was not describing bulk downvoting that could reasonably be called “karmassassination” or anything like that. This is limited to one subthread. The point is that you’re downvoting someone twice for the same thing for no better reason than that it’s across two posts. It discourages people from answering replies to their posts (and rewards editing answers into the original post [which doesn’t notify the person you’re responding to] or simply not engaging in discussion), which stifles discussion, because then the downvoter (who is not engaging in discussion to explain why they do not like the comments) has an extra opportunity to “legitimately” strike again, even though the downvotes are individually legitimate under the “want to have less posts like this one” theory of why people vote.
tl;dr:
What I am suggesting is that it is considered “perfectly acceptable” in part because people have not fully considered this effect.
Maybe if the votes were allowed but the karma effect reduced?
P.S.
“learn some global lesson like “don’t ever respond to requests for clarification” even if the punisher intended a more narrow lesson like “don’t make comments like this one while responding to requests for clarification”.”
The point is that the punishment is for failing to change your mind. If you continue the discussion with anything but a full retraction, it’s likely that whatever the silent downvoter disliked is not fixed. So, no, I won’t be replying to requests for clarification—people can accept the inconvenience of watching the original post for additions as a cost of the current system.
And it is a global lesson: fewer posts on a topic unpopular enough to draw downvotes always means fewer downvotes, because if you stick to one post the downvoters can’t hit you twice while remaining within the “downvoting rules”.
That’s inconsistent with my experience here.
You are, of course, free to do that.
Ditto.
Requests for clarification, in particular, are often upvoted on net after a few days.
Except, in some cases, when they are blatantly passive aggressive requests.
I don’t see how that’s relevant, I’m talking about responses to requests for clarification. Controlled for original posts that had a negative score—any downvotes that were due to disagreement with someone’s position are obviously unlikely to change with clarification, and the response will get another downvote.
You continue to imply that voting behavior is entirely a function of whether voters agree with the commenter’s position. This continues to not match my experience.
It’s certainly possible that you’re correct and that I’m drawing the wrong lesson from my experience, of course.
It isn’t obvious, though.
My assumption is that disagreement is one of several reasons that people downvote, and that people are more likely to volunteer explanations (especially to new users) for the other reasons than for disagreement. Therefore, I assumed that the downvotes I got with no explanation were for disagreement. The one person who provided an alternate theory of why I was getting downvoted denied being one of the downvoters, and when I took his advice and clarified something from an earlier post, the new comment was also downvoted.
When I said I had observed a spoiler being stated “numerous” times in the thread, as evidence that the spoiler policy wasn’t preventing this effectively, someone replied asking for a list of links to specific comments; I replied with nine, and that post was downvoted three times.
I agree with this
I suppose this is possible, but I doubt the size of the effect is significant.
Aha—I’d missed that bit.
Sure, though I usually avoid downvoting for disagreement, and I’ve gotten the impression that’s still a norm around here.
ETA: And actually countered somewhat by the tendency of several frequent users to upvote for disagreement.
I agree there is a reason for it, but you agree that this is not democratic right?
I’m pretty sure “democratic” is ill-defined—that’s charitably assuming its use above was not just an applause light.
Taboo “democratic”.
When you say “use above” I assume you are referring to TheOtherDave, because my questioning of the democratic principles of Lesswrong Karma were because it was described in response to my comment as democratic.
No, I was referring to your use of the word in this comment, whose parent (my comment) did not use the word “democratic” at all.
Ok, but your parent comment exists within a context. It was responding to Random832, who was responding to TheOtherDave’s comment about democracy. I was not solely responding to you, but to your comment with the context of theotherdave’s
I disagree–in most of my discussion with HungryTurtle, neither of us seemed to understand each other’s position and were both getting ‘ugh’ reactions to various surface factors. So the meat of his comments was trying to explain and clarify...with the final result that our diverging philosophies ‘add up to normality’ and we actually don’t disagree on all that much. Would you call that ‘advocating’ or ‘attempting to explain’?
My hypothesis was that he was getting downvotes for the same reason that I was getting ugh reaction–lots of buzzwords that seem to go against everything LessWrong represents. The difference is that when I have an ugh reaction, I like to poke and prod and investigate it, not downvote it and move on.
We have the same hypothesis
I would call an attempt to explain and clarify one’s position culminating in agreement “attempting to explain”.
I wasn’t aware that in a democracy the you had to first have majority approval to share your ideas on the main stage, or that ideas of the minority could be repressed. I also wasn’t aware that in a democracy the minority is not allowed to critique the majority. Or maybe you weren’t aware that to down vote requires a certain amount of positive Karma. How is any of the above mentioned things democratic? EDIT: There are democratic elements to the Karma system, but there exist within it undemocratic elements.
You can still upvote comments you like and ignore comments you don’t like, no matter how much karma you have. You can still make comments disagreeing with other comments-which to me seems like a much better way of voicing your ideas than a silent downvote.
I believe that the karma cap on making posts (20 karma needed for a top level post) is partly to make sure members understand the vocabulary and concepts used on LessWrong before they start making posts, and partly to keep out spambots.
I think so to.
I understand the purpose of it. I just think there are some problems with it.
I’d forgotten that there was a karma-cap on downvotes, yes. (Also noted here.)
Thanks for the reminder.
Just for my edification: are you actually claiming that your ideas are being repressed, or was that implication meant as hyperbole?
I feel that your use of “actually claiming” and “repression” here falls under the category of applause light. mentioned by thomblake.
The fact that my essay becomes significantly harder to find because 11-27 people ( had some positives) disliked it, what would you call that?
My use of “repression” was quoting your use of it, which I consider appropriate, since I was referencing your claim.
And your use of “acutally claiming”?
Was not quoting anyone’s use of it.
Incidentally, I’m taking your subsequent rhetoric as confirmation that you did in fact intend the claim that your ideas are being repressed, since you don’t seem likely to explicitly answer that question anytime soon.
I do think the way negative karma works is a type of repression. Honestly I don’t see how you could think otherwise.
Perhaps I was not clear enough. What I meant was that you saying “are you actually claiming” is applause light. Do you disagree?
OK, thanks for clarifying that.
I infer further, from what you’ve said elsewhere, that it’s a type of repression that works by making some users less able to make comments/posts than others, and some comments less visible to readers than others, and some posts less visible to readers than others. Is that correct?
Assuming it is, I infer you consider it a bad thing for that reason. Is that correct?
Assuming it is, I infer you would consider it a better thing if all comments/posts were equally visible to readers, no matter how many readers considered those comments/posts valueless or valuable. Is that correct?
I am taking your subsequent rhetoric as confirmation that you do in fact agree “are you actually claiming” is a type of applause lights terminology.
Yes.
No, not exactly. As I told swimmer in theory the karma system is a good idea. I do not think it would be better if all posts were equally visible, I think it would be better if there was a fairer system of down posting ideas. Not exactly, In theory the idea of monitoring for trolling is good, but in my opinion, the LW karma system fails in practice.
First of all, do you believe that the up-down voting and down voting serves the purpose of filtering well written, interesting ideas? I feel a large portion of voting is based on rhetoric.
If a person uses any terminology that exists outside of the LW community, or uses a LW terminology in a different context, they are down-voted. Is this a valid reason to down vote someone? From what you and other LW members have said, I infer that the reason for down voting in these cases is to create a stable foundation of terminology to limit misunderstanding by limiting the number of accepted definitions of a term. Is that correct?
No, not especially. I think it serves the purpose of allowing filtering posts and comments that other LessWrong users consider valuable. Sometimes they consider stuff valuable because it’s well-written and interesting, yes. Sometimes because it’s funny. Sometimes because they agree with it. Sometimes because it’s engagingly contrarian. Sometimes for other reasons.
I would certainly agree with this. I’m not sure what you intend to capture by the contrast between “well-written” and “rhetoric,” though.
That’s not just false, it’s downright bizarre.
I would agree, though, that sometimes terminology is introduced to discussions in ways that people find valueless, and they vote accordingly.
This is sometimes true, and sometimes false, depending (again) on whether the use is considered valuable or valueless.
Downvoting a comment/post because it does those things in a valueless way (and has no compensating value) is perfectly valid. Downvoting a comment/post because it does those things in a valuable way is not valid.
No, not especially. I would agree that that’s a fine thing, but I’d be really astonished if that were the reason for downvoting in any significant number of cases.
I don’t agree that it was an applause light specifically, but the distinction is relatively subtle and I’m uninterested in defending it, so we can agree it was an applause light for the sake of argument it if that helps you make some broader point. More generally, I agree that it was a rhetorical tactic in a similar class as applause lights.
I don’t think you’ve grokked that expression.
It’s entirely possible to get karma by being critical of majority opinions here, if your points are well made. XiXiDu, for example, has 5777 karma at the time of this posting, and most of that has come from comments criticizing majority opinions here. Conversely, you can make a large number of comments that agree with majority positions here and not get any karma at all, if other members don’t feel you’re making any meaningful contribution.
Generally speaking, I find that simple assertions which run directly counter to mainstream positions here will tend to be downvoted, comments that run counter to mainstream positions with explanation, but which are poorly argued and/or written tend to be downvoted, and comments which run counter to mainstream positions which are moderately to well argued tend to be upvoted. Many people, myself included, will upvote comments whose conclusions they do not necessarily agree with, if they think it encourages useful discourse.
It’s probably hard not to be offended if a comment you’ve put thought into starts getting downvoted, but rather than assuming that the community is trying to stomp down dissenting views, I suggest adding a comment, or editing your original, to ask people to explain their reasons for downvoting. At least some people will probably answer.
I’m more likely to upvote comments I disagree with, partly because I think I have more to learn from those ideas and I want to encourage the poster to keep posting.
I have an additional impulse to upvote well argued comments I disagree with, but I think it’s largely because I’m subconsciously trying to reinforce my own self perception as a fair and impartial person.
Maybe my tone was off, but the one time I directly asked for an explanation for a downvote, all I got was another downvote.
I would like to say for the record that that sucks, and that whoever did that second downvote should feel like a jerk.
Is this a false overstatement, or is it merely hyperbole?
It uses ‘voting’, it correlates to some extent with the collective will of the community, and more than one person gets a say. It sounds much more democratic than a banhammer-wielding moderator and no karma, which is the default for web forums. If it seems “by no means” democratic to you, we definitely need to taboo “democratic”.
It is a false overstatment. I agree with your point.
Is this a false overstatement, or is it merely hyperbole?
It uses ‘voting’, it correlates to some extent with the collective will of the community, and more than one person gets a say. It sounds much more democratic than a banhammer-wielding moderator and no karma, which is the default for web forums. If it seems “by no means” democratic to you, we definitely need to taboo “democratic”.
Really? There isn’t an efficient system for spending money to reliably buy votes in place. Doesn’t sound all that typically “American”. Or was there some other kind of message that “American-style democracy” is intended to convey as a diff over “democracy”.
Mostly, the phrase “American-style democracy” was intended to preserve structural parallelism with “soviet russia style censorship”.
But you’re right about the lack of an efficient system for buying karma. Given how much attention we collectively pay to karma scores, I wonder if this is a potentially valuable fundraising mechanism for SI?
Depending on what scale you choose, you can say humans have had a pretty big impact (on the earth itself, comparable to a big extinction event from the past), or a very small impact (the earth is a very, very tiny fraction of everything that’s out there). We’ve had a big impact on ourselves and our own future options, since right now we live on Earth and that’s where we’re doing all our messing-stuff-up, but I guess I think of reality as being a bit bigger than that.
I think reality is bigger than the earth, and our impact on reality is questionable. BUT when I say our reality I am not talking about all of reality but the portion of it that defines our existence. Personally, I find realities on the other side of the universe to be worth a small small allotment of my resources, or humanities for that matter. I do not think it is a flat out waste of time, but I think that at this stage in human development the amount of consciousness, resources, and man power that should be spent theorizing about or basing decisions on reality that exists beyond our reality is minute.
EDIT: So I guess my response is that i agree, but I think that it would be pretty stupid to pick a scale bigger than the milky way galaxy, and that is being generous. Do you disagree?