The definition I’d have given for applause lights would have been “A statement so obviously the Right Thing that it provides no useful information”.
From Applause Lights: “I think it means that you have said the word “democracy”, so the audience is supposed to cheer. It’s not so much a propositional statement, as the equivalent of the “Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap.”
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.
e.g. “God bless the United States of America”.
So I checked your karma in case it was just a noobish mistake by me, precommited to change my mind if you had a lot more than me, but it turns out you have even less. Thus I’d say you were wrong in correcting me.
Ugh. Seriously? You probably didn’t mean this as bad as it sounded, but it effectively looks as you’re saying he was wrong in correcting you not because he was actually wrong, but because he shouldn’t correct people with higher status (as marked by karma points).
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.
Ugh. Seriously? You probably didn’t mean this as bad as it sounded, but it effectively looks as you’re saying he was wrong in correcting you not because he was actually wrong, but because he shouldn’t correct people with higher status (as marked by karma points).
Ironically I considered noting that comment in my reply and saying something like “Respect for recognizing noisy evidence as evidence.”.
You probably didn’t mean this as bad as it sounded, but it effectively looks as you’re saying he was wrong in correcting you not because he was actually wrong, but because he shouldn’t correct people with higher status (as marked by karma point).
I suspect that he meant something like “Applause Lights” is an LW specific term. Therefore, to a very rough approximation, karma levels may be a rough way of estimating who understands how the term is used around here since karma roughly approximates how much time someone has spent here.
That seems like an extremely weak argument, and I agree that the way it was phrased sounded pretty bad. I don’t think my interpretation is that much better.
From Applause Lights: “I think it means that you have said the word “democracy”, so the audience is supposed to cheer. It’s not so much a propositional statement, as the equivalent of the “Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap.”
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.
e.g. “God bless the United States of America”.
Ugh. Seriously? You probably didn’t mean this as bad as it sounded, but it effectively looks as you’re saying he was wrong in correcting you not because he was actually wrong, but because he shouldn’t correct people with higher status (as marked by karma points).
That’s a really really bad attitude to have.
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.
Ironically I considered noting that comment in my reply and saying something like “Respect for recognizing noisy evidence as evidence.”.
Thanks, I am flatered! ^_^
I suspect that he meant something like “Applause Lights” is an LW specific term. Therefore, to a very rough approximation, karma levels may be a rough way of estimating who understands how the term is used around here since karma roughly approximates how much time someone has spent here.
That seems like an extremely weak argument, and I agree that the way it was phrased sounded pretty bad. I don’t think my interpretation is that much better.
That was a factor in considering karma stronger evidence in this case than I usually do, yes.