Karma-score (and voting up/down) could also be a measure of rationality contra affiliation. Movement in itself being more important than the direction of the movement as a clue to your affiliation drive or rationality drive—given a little context and some scrupulous introspection.
I don’t know if karma is itself a good measure of rationality, but it might be a good subject to train calibration on. E.g., whenever you make a post or comment there could be an optional field where you put in your expectation and SD for what the post’s or the comment’s score will be one week later.
Its too bad karma scores are reads-neutral. Late comments to posts tend to get ignored at the bottom of the thread. I wonder if one couldn’t add a “Read this comment” button… though I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t bother.
“Recent comments” may work when traffic is low and there is only 1-2 posts a day. But imagine when this thing gets going and you’re posting in an old article during high traffic hours.
There certainly should be. And possibly a “recent comments on all articles except [list of articles]” feed. That way, people could see possibly interesting comments on old articles, while avoiding comments to recent high traffic articles they aren’t interested in.
Funny how the holiday became devoted towards making rational self-improvement goals. Which leads me to my next point: I think people who decide to self-improve on their own, and actually follow through, are already more rational than the average joe. Most people rationalize their mediocrity, find reasons not to self-improve, and stay preoccupied with tasks that don’t impinge on their mental comfort level.
I agree that people that try to self-improve have more potential to be rational, but I don’t think significantly more are in practice. If your goals are misplaced, achieving them could be worse than if you did nothing. On the subject of New Year Resolutions, my parents are apt to make goals like “attend religious services more frequently” and “read scripture more frequently”, and they often succeed.
Karma-score (and voting up/down) could also be a measure of rationality contra affiliation. Movement in itself being more important than the direction of the movement as a clue to your affiliation drive or rationality drive—given a little context and some scrupulous introspection.
I don’t know if karma is itself a good measure of rationality, but it might be a good subject to train calibration on. E.g., whenever you make a post or comment there could be an optional field where you put in your expectation and SD for what the post’s or the comment’s score will be one week later.
Its too bad karma scores are reads-neutral. Late comments to posts tend to get ignored at the bottom of the thread. I wonder if one couldn’t add a “Read this comment” button… though I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t bother.
Late comments getting ignored would not be an issue if people primarily read comments via “Recent Comments”.
“Recent comments” may work when traffic is low and there is only 1-2 posts a day. But imagine when this thing gets going and you’re posting in an old article during high traffic hours.
Maybe there should be a “recent comments less than half the age of the article” feed.
Maybe there should be “recent comments on this article” feeds.
There certainly should be. And possibly a “recent comments on all articles except [list of articles]” feed. That way, people could see possibly interesting comments on old articles, while avoiding comments to recent high traffic articles they aren’t interested in.
Another candidate for a behavioural test could be the number of New Year Resolutions you make and hold.
Funny how the holiday became devoted towards making rational self-improvement goals. Which leads me to my next point: I think people who decide to self-improve on their own, and actually follow through, are already more rational than the average joe. Most people rationalize their mediocrity, find reasons not to self-improve, and stay preoccupied with tasks that don’t impinge on their mental comfort level.
I agree that people that try to self-improve have more potential to be rational, but I don’t think significantly more are in practice. If your goals are misplaced, achieving them could be worse than if you did nothing. On the subject of New Year Resolutions, my parents are apt to make goals like “attend religious services more frequently” and “read scripture more frequently”, and they often succeed.
You’d want people to estimate the utility of their goals and compare that to a post-goal completion estimate of utility. See here http://lesswrong.com/lw/h/test_your_rationality/dg#comments
That sounds healthy for them. Did they benefit from it?