I think that depending on what you mean by “The Right Thing” (whether you mean it mockingly or actually), you’re right or wrong in your understanding of what applause lights means. But either way: the point of “applause lights” is that it’s more of a signal for mutual self-congratulation than something with actual meaning/content.
I’m not sure if I’d go so far as to call it mocking, but I certainly meant it in a way not very correlated with actually being correct or moral.
I use total karma as evidence about how likely someone is to be correct about LW conventions, since in order to get very high karma you have to have been here for a long time and have written a lot and thus getting misunderstandings sorted out by being corrected. I also use it as weaker evidence at being correct in general about anything, since I believe LW consensus to be correlated with that. I put LW karma in roughly the same class of evidence as market prices, something which can sometimes say quite silly things but on other occasions be more trustworthy than your own brain. I could actually feel through introspection I weren’t able to consider the issue without bias so I just let that decide.
I’m not sure if I’d go so far as to call it mocking, but I certainly meant it in a way not very correlated with actually being correct or moral.
I use total karma as evidence about how likely someone is to be correct about LW conventions, since in order to get very high karma you have to have been here for a long time and have written a lot and thus getting misunderstandings sorted out by being corrected. I also use it as weaker evidence at being correct in general about anything, since I believe LW consensus to be correlated with that. I put LW karma in roughly the same class of evidence as market prices, something which can sometimes say quite silly things but on other occasions be more trustworthy than your own brain. I could actually feel through introspection I weren’t able to consider the issue without bias so I just let that decide.