Another problem is that a reputation system might drive away people with
valuable insights about certain agreed upon topics.
Relax, I doubt anyone with the ability to produce high-quality thinking is so insecure that (s)he’d be scared of getting a few downvotes on a website. (Myself, I once got an article submission voted to oblivion, but it just felt good in a feeling-of-superiority kind of way since I thought the LW community was the party being more wrong there—though I think that to have found myself to be more wrong than I think I was would have felt good too.)
In general, I find it weird how some people manage to take the karma system so seriously. I thought it was acknowledged all along by the community that it’s a very crude thing with only very limited usefulness (though still worth having).
Relax, I doubt anyone with the ability to produce high-quality thinking is so insecure that (s)he’d be scared of getting a few downvotes on a website.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the ability to produce high-quality thinking actually correlated with insecurity. People who spend time developing intellectual skills often neglect developing social skills, and a lack of friends/real social contact then makes them feel insecure.
I think you’re probably right if we count more stuff as “high-quality thinking” than I was meaning to do. But if we’re rather strict about what counts as high-quality, I think I’m right.
(Also I’ll emphasize that I wasn’t talking about insecurity in general, but being insecure to such an extent that one refrains from posting high-quality stuff to an anonymity-enabling website because of a fear of getting downvoted.)
Relax, I doubt anyone with the ability to produce high-quality thinking is so insecure that (s)he’d be scared of getting a few downvotes on a website. (Myself, I once got an article submission voted to oblivion, but it just felt good in a feeling-of-superiority kind of way since I thought the LW community was the party being more wrong there—though I think that to have found myself to be more wrong than I think I was would have felt good too.)
In general, I find it weird how some people manage to take the karma system so seriously. I thought it was acknowledged all along by the community that it’s a very crude thing with only very limited usefulness (though still worth having).
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the ability to produce high-quality thinking actually correlated with insecurity. People who spend time developing intellectual skills often neglect developing social skills, and a lack of friends/real social contact then makes them feel insecure.
I think you’re probably right if we count more stuff as “high-quality thinking” than I was meaning to do. But if we’re rather strict about what counts as high-quality, I think I’m right.
(Also I’ll emphasize that I wasn’t talking about insecurity in general, but being insecure to such an extent that one refrains from posting high-quality stuff to an anonymity-enabling website because of a fear of getting downvoted.)