I tried a bit of a natural experiment to see if rationalists would be more negative towards an idea if it’s called socialism vs if it’s called it something else. I made two posts that are identical, except one calls it socialism right at the start, and one only reveals I was talking about socialism at the very end (perhaps it would’ve been better if I hadn’t revealed it at all). The former I posted to LW, the latter I posted to the EA forum.
I expected that the comments on LW would be more negative, that I would get more downvotes and gave it a 50% chance the mods wouldn’t even promote it to the frontpage on LW (but would on EA forum).
The comments were more negative on LW. I did get more downvotes, but I also got more upvotes and got more karma overall: (12 karma from 19 votes on EA and 27 karma from 39 votes on LW). Posts tend to get more karma on LW, but the difference is big enough that I consider my prediction to be wrong. Lastly, the LW mods did end up promoting it to the frontpage, but it took a very long time (maybe they had a debate about it).
Overall, while rationalists are more negative towards socialist ideas that are called socialist, they aren’t as negative as I expected and will update accordingly.
My problem with calling things “socialist” is that the word is typically used in a motte-and-bailey fashion: “seizing the means of production, centralized planning” vs “cooperating, helping each other”. (Talking about the latter, but in a way that makes an applause light of the former.) This is analogical to “religion” meaning either “following the commandments in ancient books literally, obeying religious leaders” or “perceiving beauty in the universe, helping each other”. Neither socialists not christians have invented the concept of human cooperation.
More meta: if other people also have a problem with clarity of thought/communication, this should be a greater concern for LW audience than for EA audience, given the different focus of the websites.
Just wanted to say I think this was an interesting experiment to run. (I’m not sure I think the data here is clean enough to directly imply anything, since among other things EAF and LW have different audiences. But, still think this was a neat test of the mods)
I was one of the downvotes you predicted, but I didn’t react as negatively as I expected to. I suspect I’d have been roughly as critical of “democratization”—it’s a word that can mean many many different things, and the article, while long and somewhat interesting, didn’t actually match either title.
Fun experiment, and mostly I’m surprised that there’s so little overlap between the sites that nobody pointed out the duplicate, which should have been a crosspost.
I tried a bit of a natural experiment to see if rationalists would be more negative towards an idea if it’s called socialism vs if it’s called it something else. I made two posts that are identical, except one calls it socialism right at the start, and one only reveals I was talking about socialism at the very end (perhaps it would’ve been better if I hadn’t revealed it at all). The former I posted to LW, the latter I posted to the EA forum.
I expected that the comments on LW would be more negative, that I would get more downvotes and gave it a 50% chance the mods wouldn’t even promote it to the frontpage on LW (but would on EA forum).
The comments were more negative on LW. I did get more downvotes, but I also got more upvotes and got more karma overall: (12 karma from 19 votes on EA and 27 karma from 39 votes on LW). Posts tend to get more karma on LW, but the difference is big enough that I consider my prediction to be wrong. Lastly, the LW mods did end up promoting it to the frontpage, but it took a very long time (maybe they had a debate about it).
Overall, while rationalists are more negative towards socialist ideas that are called socialist, they aren’t as negative as I expected and will update accordingly.
My problem with calling things “socialist” is that the word is typically used in a motte-and-bailey fashion: “seizing the means of production, centralized planning” vs “cooperating, helping each other”. (Talking about the latter, but in a way that makes an applause light of the former.) This is analogical to “religion” meaning either “following the commandments in ancient books literally, obeying religious leaders” or “perceiving beauty in the universe, helping each other”. Neither socialists not christians have invented the concept of human cooperation.
More meta: if other people also have a problem with clarity of thought/communication, this should be a greater concern for LW audience than for EA audience, given the different focus of the websites.
Just wanted to say I think this was an interesting experiment to run. (I’m not sure I think the data here is clean enough to directly imply anything, since among other things EAF and LW have different audiences. But, still think this was a neat test of the mods)
I was one of the downvotes you predicted, but I didn’t react as negatively as I expected to. I suspect I’d have been roughly as critical of “democratization”—it’s a word that can mean many many different things, and the article, while long and somewhat interesting, didn’t actually match either title.
Fun experiment, and mostly I’m surprised that there’s so little overlap between the sites that nobody pointed out the duplicate, which should have been a crosspost.