I’m not making a normative claim. The factual claim I’d make is that complex explanations detailing several factual reasons are a bad answer to “why did my post get downvoted” because most people most of the time don’t put anywhere near that much thought into their votes. (I also think votes on LW are way more meaningful than anywhere else on the internet, but I don’t see a contradiction.)
If people babble about why they downvoted, the babble will usually be related in some way even if it is imperfect. Also, your babble should be aligned with your sense of strategy rather than being arbitrary.
Also, your babble should be aligned with your sense of strategy
I don’t agree. (I think? I’m not sure what you mean by strategy.) I think your comment should try to track what’s actually going on, not what you want to be going on.
Also note that I was trying to give an impression of what the median response could be. (Which was itself not very well thought out, but that was the attempt.) And the people who take the time to comment have very likely put more thought into their vote than the median, so even if they represented their reasons accurately, it’d still be a distorted picture.
I think your comment should try to track what’s actually going on, not what you want to be going on.
Well the latter is obviously more arbitrary (and less strategic) than the former; you do need a non-misleading map to behave strategically within the territory, and the world does not get the way humans want it to be by convincing each other that it is already that way, except for some rare self-fulfilling prophecies such as your group’s collective belief in the ability to correct each other.
And the people who take the time to comment have very likely put more thought into their vote than the median, so even if they represented their reasons accurately, it’d still be a distorted picture.
A distorted picture of why it was downvoted? But if the karma is determined arbitrarily then it is questionably valuable apart from the subset which does respond.
Actually I think we should be called LessWrong for a reason.
I’m not making a normative claim. The factual claim I’d make is that complex explanations detailing several factual reasons are a bad answer to “why did my post get downvoted” because most people most of the time don’t put anywhere near that much thought into their votes. (I also think votes on LW are way more meaningful than anywhere else on the internet, but I don’t see a contradiction.)
If people babble about why they downvoted, the babble will usually be related in some way even if it is imperfect. Also, your babble should be aligned with your sense of strategy rather than being arbitrary.
I don’t agree. (I think? I’m not sure what you mean by strategy.) I think your comment should try to track what’s actually going on, not what you want to be going on.
Also note that I was trying to give an impression of what the median response could be. (Which was itself not very well thought out, but that was the attempt.) And the people who take the time to comment have very likely put more thought into their vote than the median, so even if they represented their reasons accurately, it’d still be a distorted picture.
Well the latter is obviously more arbitrary (and less strategic) than the former; you do need a non-misleading map to behave strategically within the territory, and the world does not get the way humans want it to be by convincing each other that it is already that way, except for some rare self-fulfilling prophecies such as your group’s collective belief in the ability to correct each other.
A distorted picture of why it was downvoted? But if the karma is determined arbitrarily then it is questionably valuable apart from the subset which does respond.
On that note, I’d love to get more feedback on this shortform of mine, which I feel is very underrated and full of great potential:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MveJKzvogJBQYaR7C/lvsn-s-shortform?commentId=e2TtdTbj5zbaGkE5c