You would prefer, if I am understanding you right (I remark explicitly that of course I might not be), a world where the thing people do besides approving/disapproving is separating out specific factual claims and assessing whether they consider those true or false. I think that (1) labelling the buttons agree/disagree will not get you that, (2) there are important cases in which something else, closer to agree/disagree, is more valuable information, (3) reasonable users will typically use agree/disagree in the way you would like them to use true/false except in those cases, and (4) unreasonable users would likely use true/false in the exact same unhelpful ways as they would use agree/disagree.
Taking those somewhat out of order:
On #2: as has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, for comments that say things like “I think X” or “I like Y” a strict true/false evaluation is answering the question “does the LW readership agree that Duncan thinks X?” whereas an agree/disagree evaluation is answering the question “does the LW readership also think X or like Y?”, and it seems obvious to me that the latter is much more likely to be useful than the former.
On #4: some people don’t think very clearly, or aren’t concerned with fairness, or have a grudge against a particular other user, or are politically mindkilled, or whatever, and I completely agree with you that those people are liable to abuse an agree/disagree button as (in effect) another version of aspprove/disapprove with extra pretentions. But I would expect those people to do the same with true/false buttons. By definition, they are not trying hard to use the system in a maximally helpful way, attending to subtle distinctions of meaning.
Hence #1: labelling the buttons true/false will not in fact make those people use them the way you would like them to be used.
On #3: Users who are thinking clearly, trying to be fair, etc., will I think typically interpret agree/disagree buttons as asking whether they agree with the factual content of the text in question. There will of course be exceptions, but I think they will mostly be situations like the ones in #2 where pure factual-content-evaluation is (at least in my view) the Wrong Thing.
(Another class of situations where true/false and agree/disagree might diverge: a comment that both asserts facts and makes an argument. Maybe true/false is specifically about the facts and agree/disagree is about the argument too. My expectation would be that when the argument rather than the factual claims is the main point—e.g., because the factual claims are uncontroversial—agree/disagree will be applied to the argument, and otherwise they will be applied to the factual claims. That seems OK to me. You might disagree.)
I think a single vote system baaasically boils down to approve/disapprove already. People do some weighted sum of how true and how useful/productive they find a comment is, and vote accordingly.
I think a single vote already conveys a bunch of information about agreement. Very very few people upvote things they disagree with, even on LW, and most of the time they do, they leave a disambiguating comment (I’ve seen Rob and philh and Daystar do this, for instance).
So making the second vote “agree/disagree” feels like adding a redundant feature; the single vote was already highly correlated with agree/disagree. (Claim.)
What I want, and have bid for every single time (with those bids basically being ignored every time, as far as I can tell) is a distinction between “this was a good contribution” and “I endorse the claims or reasoning therein.”
The thing I would find most useful is the ability to separate things out into “[More like this] and also [endorsed as true],” “[More like this] but [sketchy on truth],” “[Less like this] though [endorsed as true],” and “[Less like this] and [sketchy on truth].”
I think that’s a fascinatingly different breakdown than the usual approve/disapprove that karma represents, and would make LessWrong discussions a more interesting and useful place.
I don’t want these as two separate buttons; I have argued vociferously each time that there should be a single click that gives you two bits.
Given a two-click solution, though, I think that there are better/more interesting questions to pose to the user than like-versus-agree, especially because (as I’ve mentioned each time) I don’t trust the LW userbase to meaningfully distinguish those two. I trust some users to do so most of the time, but that’s worse than nothing when it comes to interpreting e.g. a contextless −5 on one of my posts, which means something very different if it was put there by users I trust than by users I do not trust.
On your #2, the solution I’ve endorsed in a few places is “I could truthfully say this or something close to it from my own beliefs and experience,” which captures both truth and agreement very nicely.
On your #4, this button is no worse than the current implementation.
Basically, I would like us to be setting out to do a useful and reasonable thing in the first place. I don’t think “agree/disagree” is a useful or reasonable thing; I think it is adding a new motte-and-bailey to the site. I think the “I could truthfully say this myself” is useful and reasonable and hits the goods that e.g. Oli wants, while avoiding the cost that I see (that others are reluctant to credit as existing or being important, imo because they are colorblind).
Very very few people upvote things they disagree with, even on LW, and most of the time they do, they leave a disambiguating comment (I’ve seen Rob and philh and Daystar do this, for instance).
I was surprised by this because I don’t remember doing it. After a quick look:
I didn’t find any instances where I said I upvoted something I disagreed with.
But I did find two comments that I upvoted (without saying so) despite disagreeing, because I’d asked what someone thought and they’d answered and I didn’t want to punish that.
I feel like I have more often given “verbal upvotes” for things I disagree with, things like “I’m glad you said this but”, without actually voting? I don’t vote very much for whatever reason.
I think a single vote already conveys a bunch of information about agreement. Very very few people upvote things they disagree with, even on LW, and most of the time they do, they leave a disambiguating comment (I’ve seen Rob and philh and Daystar do this, for instance)...So making the second vote “agree/disagree” feels like adding a redundant feature; the single vote was already highly correlated with agree/disagree. (Claim.)
I am not very knowledgeable about a lot of things people post about on LW, so my median upvote is on a post or comment which is thought-provoking but which I don’t have a strong opinion about. I don’t know if I am typical, but I bet there are at least many people like me.
You would prefer, if I am understanding you right (I remark explicitly that of course I might not be), a world where the thing people do besides approving/disapproving is separating out specific factual claims and assessing whether they consider those true or false. I think that (1) labelling the buttons agree/disagree will not get you that, (2) there are important cases in which something else, closer to agree/disagree, is more valuable information, (3) reasonable users will typically use agree/disagree in the way you would like them to use true/false except in those cases, and (4) unreasonable users would likely use true/false in the exact same unhelpful ways as they would use agree/disagree.
Taking those somewhat out of order:
On #2: as has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, for comments that say things like “I think X” or “I like Y” a strict true/false evaluation is answering the question “does the LW readership agree that Duncan thinks X?” whereas an agree/disagree evaluation is answering the question “does the LW readership also think X or like Y?”, and it seems obvious to me that the latter is much more likely to be useful than the former.
On #4: some people don’t think very clearly, or aren’t concerned with fairness, or have a grudge against a particular other user, or are politically mindkilled, or whatever, and I completely agree with you that those people are liable to abuse an agree/disagree button as (in effect) another version of aspprove/disapprove with extra pretentions. But I would expect those people to do the same with true/false buttons. By definition, they are not trying hard to use the system in a maximally helpful way, attending to subtle distinctions of meaning.
Hence #1: labelling the buttons true/false will not in fact make those people use them the way you would like them to be used.
On #3: Users who are thinking clearly, trying to be fair, etc., will I think typically interpret agree/disagree buttons as asking whether they agree with the factual content of the text in question. There will of course be exceptions, but I think they will mostly be situations like the ones in #2 where pure factual-content-evaluation is (at least in my view) the Wrong Thing.
(Another class of situations where true/false and agree/disagree might diverge: a comment that both asserts facts and makes an argument. Maybe true/false is specifically about the facts and agree/disagree is about the argument too. My expectation would be that when the argument rather than the factual claims is the main point—e.g., because the factual claims are uncontroversial—agree/disagree will be applied to the argument, and otherwise they will be applied to the factual claims. That seems OK to me. You might disagree.)
I think a single vote system baaasically boils down to approve/disapprove already. People do some weighted sum of how true and how useful/productive they find a comment is, and vote accordingly.
I think a single vote already conveys a bunch of information about agreement. Very very few people upvote things they disagree with, even on LW, and most of the time they do, they leave a disambiguating comment (I’ve seen Rob and philh and Daystar do this, for instance).
So making the second vote “agree/disagree” feels like adding a redundant feature; the single vote was already highly correlated with agree/disagree. (Claim.)
What I want, and have bid for every single time (with those bids basically being ignored every time, as far as I can tell) is a distinction between “this was a good contribution” and “I endorse the claims or reasoning therein.”
The thing I would find most useful is the ability to separate things out into “[More like this] and also [endorsed as true],” “[More like this] but [sketchy on truth],” “[Less like this] though [endorsed as true],” and “[Less like this] and [sketchy on truth].”
I think that’s a fascinatingly different breakdown than the usual approve/disapprove that karma represents, and would make LessWrong discussions a more interesting and useful place.
I don’t want these as two separate buttons; I have argued vociferously each time that there should be a single click that gives you two bits.
Given a two-click solution, though, I think that there are better/more interesting questions to pose to the user than like-versus-agree, especially because (as I’ve mentioned each time) I don’t trust the LW userbase to meaningfully distinguish those two. I trust some users to do so most of the time, but that’s worse than nothing when it comes to interpreting e.g. a contextless −5 on one of my posts, which means something very different if it was put there by users I trust than by users I do not trust.
On your #2, the solution I’ve endorsed in a few places is “I could truthfully say this or something close to it from my own beliefs and experience,” which captures both truth and agreement very nicely.
On your #4, this button is no worse than the current implementation.
Basically, I would like us to be setting out to do a useful and reasonable thing in the first place. I don’t think “agree/disagree” is a useful or reasonable thing; I think it is adding a new motte-and-bailey to the site. I think the “I could truthfully say this myself” is useful and reasonable and hits the goods that e.g. Oli wants, while avoiding the cost that I see (that others are reluctant to credit as existing or being important, imo because they are colorblind).
I was surprised by this because I don’t remember doing it. After a quick look:
I didn’t find any instances where I said I upvoted something I disagreed with.
But I did find two comments that I upvoted (without saying so) despite disagreeing, because I’d asked what someone thought and they’d answered and I didn’t want to punish that.
I feel like I have more often given “verbal upvotes” for things I disagree with, things like “I’m glad you said this but”, without actually voting? I don’t vote very much for whatever reason.
I must’ve swapped in a memory of some other LWer I’ve been repeatedly grateful for at various points.
<3
I am not very knowledgeable about a lot of things people post about on LW, so my median upvote is on a post or comment which is thought-provoking but which I don’t have a strong opinion about. I don’t know if I am typical, but I bet there are at least many people like me.