there’s no reason I would want to be polite with people who see no problem being rude to me.
Then expect to be downvoted—anyone else being rude to you will be downvoted as well (not necessarily on net).
By “groupthink” I mean that people are disagreeing with me simply because other people are disagreeing with me and because I already have negative karma. I also mean that they aren’t considering my arguments fairly, they’re only looking at the issue from a one sided perspectively. I’m pretty sure that this is a standard interpretation of what “groupthink” means.
Leaving aside the common “people are disagreeing with me” interpretation, I still don’t think that’s what people (non-technically) mean when they use the word “groupthink”. “Groupthink” (in the popular usage) implies that there are beliefs common to the group that are not questioned—for example, accusing Less Wrong of “groupthink” because a comment against cryonics was highly criticized would be the common usage.
Really, it should not be used that way either though, since it’s too similar to the technical meaning of the term but entirely wrong.
You’re playing with semantics and taking quotes literally. … You’re willfully being confused here.
No, I was not confused about what you meant—I was pointing out how it was not obvious. If you say “Obviously X” and I think X is also obvious to me, then I still might have grounds for arguing that X is not obvious in general. In fact, unless you’re talking about something like the color of an object that a particular group of people are currently staring at, it’s best to assume that nothing is obvious. If you do use the word “obvious”, you should expect objections from people who did not find it obvious, and expect some of them to feel that you are insulting their intelligence.
I do not see how I was playing with semantics. Yes, I take what you write literally. If you do not want me to read the words that you write, then do not write them on this website, as I will probably get around to reading all of them eventually.
Nothing that you said here is relevant to what I was contending.
Usually, “if my comment was wrong” refers to its factual accuracy, not the quality of your reasoning. So following an accusation of overconfidence with “that would only make sense if my comment was wrong” is misleading.
It is easier to reject a viewpoint if other people do not find that viewpoint credible....
I’m familiar with that effect, but I don’t see how it’s a response to either of my statements.
No, I started receiving lots of bad karma after a post I made in the earlier thread, and that trend spread to here.
Well I, for one, did not read or downvote anything you said in that other thread until I read this one. Now I’ve gone back and downvoted all the low-quality comments you made in that thread (note: that is not all of your comments).
there are people going around downvoting everything I write simply because I am the one who wrote it. That is stupid.
There are more constructive things to call that behavior other than “stupid”. And I’d like to know how you know that’s what people are doing—I have no tools that let me detect that, and looking back at your comment history you have some recent comments that are not at a net negative.
I’m done protecting the theory. I don’t have the time to argue with this many different people.
If I haven’t convinced you yet then it’s either impossible because I’m wrong or impossible because you don’t want to understand or you’re lying. I don’t much care either way, because I don’t believe that any reasonable observer would conclude that the remaining objections to what I’ve been saying are actually important. I believe that I’ve done enough to convince someone who is actually interested in knowing what happened, and that I can never convince anyone if the amount of work I’ve done so far isn’t enough.
You’ve been willfully ignorant and willfully misinterpreted me, and your disdain for debate and your rejection of “convincing” because it’s apparently associated with debate is incredibly stupid. You are acting like an idiot. If convincing shouldn’t be my primary goal, then I should stop this conversation. Your own “objection” would support my point if you thought through what you were saying and what I said. You’re clearly not concerned with doing that, however. The fact that I’m dealing with so many people who don’t bother to answer their own questions or to consider arguments before making them is the very reason that I won’t be wasting anymore time on defending my theory. You obviously aren’t interested in predicting what will or what has happened so much as you are interested in attacking me, hence the useless comment you just made.
Either you are being irrational or Aumann is wrong, given his qualifications and your above fallacies I would bet it’s the former. Please stop being stupid.
I’ve seen plenty of upvoted comments along the lines of “I’m not very smart (score below 100 on IQ tests) but want to understand this point—can someone explain it more simply?”. Stupidity is not punished, though it’s possible that many of its effects are.
Good point. I was equivocating technical stupid (scores low on IQ test) with colloquial/slangy stupid (not putting a lot of mental effort into comments, irrational, and/ or obtuse).
The process of true Bayesians coming to agreement bears precious little resemblance to a typical human argument.
;
You’ve been willfully ignorant and willfully misinterpreted me
You have a bad model of me.
Either you are being irrational or Aumann is wrong
Aumann’s Agreement Theorem only applies to perfectly rational agents in particular idealized circumstances, as much as it’s used colloquially hereabouts as though it says anything about humans.
And yes, I’m being massively irrational. I am a human. You are also being massively irrational. If you have figured out how to stop doing that, then please let us know.
your above fallacies
I did not see any fallacies. Given that I am an expert on logic, I expect that you’re just using the word wrong.
your disdain for debate and your rejection of “convincing” because it’s apparently associated with debate is incredibly stupid.
I’m still unsure what you mean by “stupid” on the object level.
For humans, being in debate-mode tends to be a bad idea with respect to truth-seeking. Once you start arguing for a position, it is very difficult to update your beliefs on new evidence.
If you have evidence, state your evidence, update on the evidence presented by others, and everybody wins. Entering into debate-mode or being rude is a great way to discourage rationality in both yourself and any respondents.
“If you have evidence, state your evidence, update on the evidence presented by others, and everybody wins.”
The people who downvote the evidence win more.
In the spoiler problem from a while ago, someone else linked to an example conversation purporting to demonstrate why the policy was a good idea. I demonstrated that it was impossible, once the user had asked his question, for the conversation to have ended without causing the alleged harm done by revealing the spoiler. Someone responded by telling me that it’s not up for discussion and no-one except Eliezer is allowed to have an opinion on whether it is a good or effective policy.
Someone responded by telling me that it’s not up for discussion and no-one except Eliezer is allowed to have an opinion on whether it is a good or effective policy.
To clarify, I don’t think this, and you are of course allowed to have an opinion (as long as you’ve filled out the proper paperwork). I just meant that he has veto power. (Also, I was rather frustrated with the conversation at that point. Sorry.)
Someone responded by telling me that it’s not up for discussion and no-one except Eliezer is allowed to have an opinion on whether it is a good or effective policy.
Do you understand why people (me included) feel that you under-clarify your arguments?
Do you realise that we (me, and I guess thornblake as well) do not mean you any harm? That harming you could not possibly help us (sorry, it could, marginally so, if it actually had a behavioural impact)?
Furthermore, it is hard to get social benefits from downvoting, since others can’t see anyone downvote you. This does NOT have the same social effect as denouncing something in public.
Then expect to be downvoted—anyone else being rude to you will be downvoted as well (not necessarily on net).
Leaving aside the common “people are disagreeing with me” interpretation, I still don’t think that’s what people (non-technically) mean when they use the word “groupthink”. “Groupthink” (in the popular usage) implies that there are beliefs common to the group that are not questioned—for example, accusing Less Wrong of “groupthink” because a comment against cryonics was highly criticized would be the common usage.
Really, it should not be used that way either though, since it’s too similar to the technical meaning of the term but entirely wrong.
No, I was not confused about what you meant—I was pointing out how it was not obvious. If you say “Obviously X” and I think X is also obvious to me, then I still might have grounds for arguing that X is not obvious in general. In fact, unless you’re talking about something like the color of an object that a particular group of people are currently staring at, it’s best to assume that nothing is obvious. If you do use the word “obvious”, you should expect objections from people who did not find it obvious, and expect some of them to feel that you are insulting their intelligence.
I do not see how I was playing with semantics. Yes, I take what you write literally. If you do not want me to read the words that you write, then do not write them on this website, as I will probably get around to reading all of them eventually.
Usually, “if my comment was wrong” refers to its factual accuracy, not the quality of your reasoning. So following an accusation of overconfidence with “that would only make sense if my comment was wrong” is misleading.
I’m familiar with that effect, but I don’t see how it’s a response to either of my statements.
Well I, for one, did not read or downvote anything you said in that other thread until I read this one. Now I’ve gone back and downvoted all the low-quality comments you made in that thread (note: that is not all of your comments).
There are more constructive things to call that behavior other than “stupid”. And I’d like to know how you know that’s what people are doing—I have no tools that let me detect that, and looking back at your comment history you have some recent comments that are not at a net negative.
I’m done protecting the theory. I don’t have the time to argue with this many different people.
If I haven’t convinced you yet then it’s either impossible because I’m wrong or impossible because you don’t want to understand or you’re lying. I don’t much care either way, because I don’t believe that any reasonable observer would conclude that the remaining objections to what I’ve been saying are actually important. I believe that I’ve done enough to convince someone who is actually interested in knowing what happened, and that I can never convince anyone if the amount of work I’ve done so far isn’t enough.
If you have future interactions on this site, please try to avoid “convincing” as a primary goal. This is not debate club.
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem
You’ve been willfully ignorant and willfully misinterpreted me, and your disdain for debate and your rejection of “convincing” because it’s apparently associated with debate is incredibly stupid. You are acting like an idiot. If convincing shouldn’t be my primary goal, then I should stop this conversation. Your own “objection” would support my point if you thought through what you were saying and what I said. You’re clearly not concerned with doing that, however. The fact that I’m dealing with so many people who don’t bother to answer their own questions or to consider arguments before making them is the very reason that I won’t be wasting anymore time on defending my theory. You obviously aren’t interested in predicting what will or what has happened so much as you are interested in attacking me, hence the useless comment you just made.
Either you are being irrational or Aumann is wrong, given his qualifications and your above fallacies I would bet it’s the former. Please stop being stupid.
Please stop being rude.
Note: we have community norms against exactly one of these.
Only one?
I’ve seen plenty of upvoted comments along the lines of “I’m not very smart (score below 100 on IQ tests) but want to understand this point—can someone explain it more simply?”. Stupidity is not punished, though it’s possible that many of its effects are.
Good point. I was equivocating technical stupid (scores low on IQ test) with colloquial/slangy stupid (not putting a lot of mental effort into comments, irrational, and/ or obtuse).
Where?
In my head. I haven’t commented upthread of here. Sorry for any confusion.
Note:
;
You have a bad model of me.
Aumann’s Agreement Theorem only applies to perfectly rational agents in particular idealized circumstances, as much as it’s used colloquially hereabouts as though it says anything about humans.
And yes, I’m being massively irrational. I am a human. You are also being massively irrational. If you have figured out how to stop doing that, then please let us know.
I did not see any fallacies. Given that I am an expert on logic, I expect that you’re just using the word wrong.
I’m still unsure what you mean by “stupid” on the object level.
For humans, being in debate-mode tends to be a bad idea with respect to truth-seeking. Once you start arguing for a position, it is very difficult to update your beliefs on new evidence.
If you have evidence, state your evidence, update on the evidence presented by others, and everybody wins. Entering into debate-mode or being rude is a great way to discourage rationality in both yourself and any respondents.
“If you have evidence, state your evidence, update on the evidence presented by others, and everybody wins.”
The people who downvote the evidence win more.
In the spoiler problem from a while ago, someone else linked to an example conversation purporting to demonstrate why the policy was a good idea. I demonstrated that it was impossible, once the user had asked his question, for the conversation to have ended without causing the alleged harm done by revealing the spoiler. Someone responded by telling me that it’s not up for discussion and no-one except Eliezer is allowed to have an opinion on whether it is a good or effective policy.
To clarify, I don’t think this, and you are of course allowed to have an opinion (as long as you’ve filled out the proper paperwork). I just meant that he has veto power. (Also, I was rather frustrated with the conversation at that point. Sorry.)
I don’t believe you.
I dispute the accuracy of that summary, but I suppose it’s possible Random832 got that impression from the conversation starting here.
Ah, I could see someone making that interpretation.
To quote, add a single greater-than sign (>) before the quote.
You are clearly already in debate mode and you have been for quite a while.
Stop.
I’m confused. I’m curious.
Can you see his point of view?
Do you understand why people (me included) feel that you under-clarify your arguments?
Do you realise that we (me, and I guess thornblake as well) do not mean you any harm? That harming you could not possibly help us (sorry, it could, marginally so, if it actually had a behavioural impact)?
Furthermore, it is hard to get social benefits from downvoting, since others can’t see anyone downvote you. This does NOT have the same social effect as denouncing something in public.