sam doesn’t make arguments, he just sprays insults all over the place
These aren’t mutually exclusive. I upvote many of his comments. Perhaps one in thirty simply deserve upvoting, one in fifteen because I have lower standards for him.
he uses the most insulting manner of expressing himself he can think of
Voting with lower standards makes sense if you think he is salvageable and want him to stick around—but that is not usually how we deal with extremely irrational posters.
He’s also provided me with enough evidence that he is not in the business of seeking truth that I have little reason to think even is reasonable-sounding points correlate with the truth. Even outside sources can be cherry-picked. If it were the case that everything here got fact checked or that we could effectively discount the evidence he provides proportionate to our estimation of his reliability this wouldn’t be a problem. But as time is a limited resource and we are not perfect Bayesian reasoners it is bad epistemic hygiene to encourage him to stick around. It is worse epistemic hygiene to lower our voting standards for him.
Not to mention the fact that people can’t seem to keep themselves from feeding the troll so we end up spending our time talking about whether or not conservatives have ever reinvented language to benefit themselves—as if that wasn’t already obvious to everyone who hasn’t been turned into a memetic zombie.
Sources are OK evidence, people bringing sources are better evidence. When those advocating banning chimp testing focus on cases decades old, that tells me no similar case has happened recently. I don’t assume that that case is typical of all chimp experiments, past and present, instead I learn the contrary.
If I find some study indicating that colleges discriminate against high school ROTC members, I don’t really have much of an idea if what I stumbled upon is the strongest evidence for that. If sam tells me about it, I am confident no reliable study showing more discrimination has been conducted.
This requires a model of the poster that not everyone reading comments will have. That can be solved by downvoting such posters to indicate their untrustworthiness.
But as I said humans are not perfect Bayesian reasoners and are not good at adjusting for unreliable speakers. We almost always either adjust too far and reverse stupidity or don’t discount enough and let cherry picked sources or skewed interpretations sneak into our brains. We’ll update without even noticing.
This seems like a selective application of a universal objection. “We almost always either adjust too far and reverse stupidity or don’t discount enough,” makes your reason technically not a universal objection, just an objection to learning anything from badly biased people, but this might be a confabulation added to the universal “humans are not perfect Bayesian reasoners”.
There is a difference between suboptimal updating and updating in ways that don’t correlate with the truth. My point is that badly biased posters may cause us to do the latter. But this is really tangential to the main thrust of my argument. Even (if) you can learn things (from) the occasional source Sam cites that seems very unlikely to make up for the rest of his noise. Well-Kept Gardens Die by Pacifism.
Even you can learn things about the occasional source Sam cites
To be read: Even if you can learn about things from the occasional source Sam cites?
WKGDbP would be squarely on point if I had implied there was anything bad about condemning, downvoting unto hiddenness, censoring, banning, or the like, that Sam had net negative value, and that the evils of censorship were what was preventing me from harsher criticism of his comments.
As it is only the first few paragraphs of that are applicable. I concede I may be succumbing to the bias of valuing known, tangible gains over unknown, intangible but probably greater losses. I think Sam has net positive value here, but your argument he is deterring more valuable people from joining is important.
I think the most important landmark in the failure scenario described is “then another fool joins, and the two fools begin talking to each other...”
To be read: Even if you can learn about things from the occasional source Sam cites?
Correct. And edited.
As it is only the first few paragraphs of that are applicable. I concede I may be succumbing to the bias of valuing known, tangible gains over unknown, intangible but probably greater losses. I think Sam has net positive value here, but your argument he is deterring more valuable people from joining is important.
I’m not sure you’re thinking about your information diet economically. Any minute you spend reading sam0345 or an indignant but obvious reply to him is a minute you could have spent reading something better. What make Less Wrong a special place is the ratio of good comments to bad not the total amount of insight gained by reading every single comment.
Yes, I’ve upvoted a couple of his comments too. A couple others got downvotes from me instead. It basically depends on whether he can focus himself on the argument, instead of the insults.
I downvoted sam’s comment above.
These aren’t mutually exclusive. I upvote many of his comments. Perhaps one in thirty simply deserve upvoting, one in fifteen because I have lower standards for him.
Probably.
Voting with lower standards makes sense if you think he is salvageable and want him to stick around—but that is not usually how we deal with extremely irrational posters.
He’s also provided me with enough evidence that he is not in the business of seeking truth that I have little reason to think even is reasonable-sounding points correlate with the truth. Even outside sources can be cherry-picked. If it were the case that everything here got fact checked or that we could effectively discount the evidence he provides proportionate to our estimation of his reliability this wouldn’t be a problem. But as time is a limited resource and we are not perfect Bayesian reasoners it is bad epistemic hygiene to encourage him to stick around. It is worse epistemic hygiene to lower our voting standards for him.
Not to mention the fact that people can’t seem to keep themselves from feeding the troll so we end up spending our time talking about whether or not conservatives have ever reinvented language to benefit themselves—as if that wasn’t already obvious to everyone who hasn’t been turned into a memetic zombie.
Sources are OK evidence, people bringing sources are better evidence. When those advocating banning chimp testing focus on cases decades old, that tells me no similar case has happened recently. I don’t assume that that case is typical of all chimp experiments, past and present, instead I learn the contrary.
If I find some study indicating that colleges discriminate against high school ROTC members, I don’t really have much of an idea if what I stumbled upon is the strongest evidence for that. If sam tells me about it, I am confident no reliable study showing more discrimination has been conducted.
This requires a model of the poster that not everyone reading comments will have. That can be solved by downvoting such posters to indicate their untrustworthiness.
But as I said humans are not perfect Bayesian reasoners and are not good at adjusting for unreliable speakers. We almost always either adjust too far and reverse stupidity or don’t discount enough and let cherry picked sources or skewed interpretations sneak into our brains. We’ll update without even noticing.
This seems like a selective application of a universal objection. “We almost always either adjust too far and reverse stupidity or don’t discount enough,” makes your reason technically not a universal objection, just an objection to learning anything from badly biased people, but this might be a confabulation added to the universal “humans are not perfect Bayesian reasoners”.
There is a difference between suboptimal updating and updating in ways that don’t correlate with the truth. My point is that badly biased posters may cause us to do the latter. But this is really tangential to the main thrust of my argument. Even (if) you can learn things (from) the occasional source Sam cites that seems very unlikely to make up for the rest of his noise. Well-Kept Gardens Die by Pacifism.
To be read: Even if you can learn about things from the occasional source Sam cites?
WKGDbP would be squarely on point if I had implied there was anything bad about condemning, downvoting unto hiddenness, censoring, banning, or the like, that Sam had net negative value, and that the evils of censorship were what was preventing me from harsher criticism of his comments.
As it is only the first few paragraphs of that are applicable. I concede I may be succumbing to the bias of valuing known, tangible gains over unknown, intangible but probably greater losses. I think Sam has net positive value here, but your argument he is deterring more valuable people from joining is important.
I think the most important landmark in the failure scenario described is “then another fool joins, and the two fools begin talking to each other...”
That’s where I draw the line, personally.
Correct. And edited.
I’m not sure you’re thinking about your information diet economically. Any minute you spend reading sam0345 or an indignant but obvious reply to him is a minute you could have spent reading something better. What make Less Wrong a special place is the ratio of good comments to bad not the total amount of insight gained by reading every single comment.
Yes, I’ve upvoted a couple of his comments too. A couple others got downvotes from me instead. It basically depends on whether he can focus himself on the argument, instead of the insults.