I think this is why this button will be a very strong pressure away from LW, for me.
If the button claims to be about evaluating the truth or falsehood of the content of a comment, and also my comment has said a bunch of true stuff, and has a −17 on it or something, I will absolutely find this emotionally relevant and be Sad about it and want to spend much much less time on LW.
And if the button is not about the truth or falsehood of the content, and is just a signal of … how Other I am, versus how much I am Like the rest of the monkeys reading it, I expect to very frequently be receiving blunt You Are Not Like Us signals, all the time, and to have those signals permanently inscribed on all of my commentary (“look at what the guy that everybody disagrees with thinks!”) and to find this sad and alienating.
Like, I really cannot overstate the strength of the deterrent of the -n numbers on my comments on this post, alone. I’m keeping my hand on the hot stove because this feels important, but it does not feel good.
If this change sticks as it currently is, it will be really really difficult and painful for me to be on LW. Or, to be more specific: it’s already quite difficult and painful for me to be on LW, and I try very hard anyway/it takes up a disproportionate number of my spoons, and this will make that much worse.
I think that might just end up being fine/the cost that’s worth paying/the least bad option. Like, +10 good for thousands of users while −1000 for just Duncan is an obvious choice. But I wanted to be unequivocal about hating it, in its current state.
EDIT: “very strong pressure” as in, am currently right this minute trying to figure out where I will start posting essays in the future in the hypothetical where this change sticks, since probably-not-LW. =(
So someone can make a statement: “X”. X might be indexical or not. Indexical statements refer to the speaker, like “I think that probabilities are cool” or “I see a parrot.”. Non-indexical statements don’t, like “Probabilities track priors + evidence” or “There are parrots in the world”. The line is blurry: is “Probabilities are cool” implicitly indexical? Agree/disagree with X could be taken to mean, “It would be true if I said X, with the index pointing to me”, while true/untrue means, “X is the case”. If X is non-indexical, asserting agree/disagree is the same as asserting true/untrue. If X is indexical, they’re not the same; disagreeing with “I see a parrot” means “I (the disagree-er) don’t (myself) see a parrot”, while saying ” ‘I (the original speaker) see a parrot’ is untrue” means “No, you don’t see a parrot”.
Duncan, what would you think about a button that means agree/disagree in that sense, i.e., “I could also say this truthfully”? (As opposed to, it would be good for me to say this, or I would actually say this.) Is there a way to make that meaning clear? habryka, would that button get the value for you?
I like the sentence “I could also say this truthfully”, and I feel like it points towards the right generator that I have for what I would like “agree/disagree” to mean.
The tooltip of “Agree: Do you agree with the statements in this comment? Would the statements in this comment ring true if you said them yourself?” feels possibly good, though sure is a bit awkward and am not fully sure how reliably it would get the point across.
I’m pretty cynical about the ability to encourage any nuanced interpretation of such a simple input. Enough people will just use their first impression based on the icons and a quick reading of the labels that you will never be sure what the votes ACTUALLY mean, regardless of how clear your text guidance is.
I hope that people will just not use the agree/disagree voting for comments where it’s ambiguous what an entry would mean. If it doesn’t provide useful information about my reaction to the comment, why wouldn’t I just let my karma vote stand alone?
I think this is why this button will be a very strong pressure away from LW, for me.
If the button claims to be about evaluating the truth or falsehood of the content of a comment, and also my comment has said a bunch of true stuff, and has a −17 on it or something, I will absolutely find this emotionally relevant and be Sad about it and want to spend much much less time on LW.
And if the button is not about the truth or falsehood of the content, and is just a signal of … how Other I am, versus how much I am Like the rest of the monkeys reading it, I expect to very frequently be receiving blunt You Are Not Like Us signals, all the time, and to have those signals permanently inscribed on all of my commentary (“look at what the guy that everybody disagrees with thinks!”) and to find this sad and alienating.
Like, I really cannot overstate the strength of the deterrent of the -n numbers on my comments on this post, alone. I’m keeping my hand on the hot stove because this feels important, but it does not feel good.
If this change sticks as it currently is, it will be really really difficult and painful for me to be on LW. Or, to be more specific: it’s already quite difficult and painful for me to be on LW, and I try very hard anyway/it takes up a disproportionate number of my spoons, and this will make that much worse.
I think that might just end up being fine/the cost that’s worth paying/the least bad option. Like, +10 good for thousands of users while −1000 for just Duncan is an obvious choice. But I wanted to be unequivocal about hating it, in its current state.
EDIT: “very strong pressure” as in, am currently right this minute trying to figure out where I will start posting essays in the future in the hypothetical where this change sticks, since probably-not-LW. =(
So someone can make a statement: “X”. X might be indexical or not. Indexical statements refer to the speaker, like “I think that probabilities are cool” or “I see a parrot.”. Non-indexical statements don’t, like “Probabilities track priors + evidence” or “There are parrots in the world”. The line is blurry: is “Probabilities are cool” implicitly indexical? Agree/disagree with X could be taken to mean, “It would be true if I said X, with the index pointing to me”, while true/untrue means, “X is the case”. If X is non-indexical, asserting agree/disagree is the same as asserting true/untrue. If X is indexical, they’re not the same; disagreeing with “I see a parrot” means “I (the disagree-er) don’t (myself) see a parrot”, while saying ” ‘I (the original speaker) see a parrot’ is untrue” means “No, you don’t see a parrot”.
Duncan, what would you think about a button that means agree/disagree in that sense, i.e., “I could also say this truthfully”? (As opposed to, it would be good for me to say this, or I would actually say this.) Is there a way to make that meaning clear? habryka, would that button get the value for you?
I like the sentence “I could also say this truthfully”, and I feel like it points towards the right generator that I have for what I would like “agree/disagree” to mean.
The tooltip of “Agree: Do you agree with the statements in this comment? Would the statements in this comment ring true if you said them yourself?” feels possibly good, though sure is a bit awkward and am not fully sure how reliably it would get the point across.
I’m pretty cynical about the ability to encourage any nuanced interpretation of such a simple input. Enough people will just use their first impression based on the icons and a quick reading of the labels that you will never be sure what the votes ACTUALLY mean, regardless of how clear your text guidance is.
I hope that people will just not use the agree/disagree voting for comments where it’s ambiguous what an entry would mean. If it doesn’t provide useful information about my reaction to the comment, why wouldn’t I just let my karma vote stand alone?
I find the solution of “I could also say this truthfully” to be pretty clever and my gut sense is that it would resolve the distress.