I think of it as a proxy for “valued member of the community”—if someone has karma, then people like their posts and comments. I’m mostly here to have fun and pass the time, and I happen to find discussing rationality to be fun. I don’t really expect refining the art of human rationality to be well-correlated with a popularity contest.
And do you think Goodhart’s Law, as presented in the post, applies here? That is, we should expect that eventually people (through gaming the system) end up with high karma without that in fact reliably correlating with being valued members of the community?
As a data point, one thing I’ve noticed that seems to give a disproportionate amount of karma is arguing with someone who’s wrong and unwilling to listen. It’s easy to think they might come around eventually, and each point you make against them is worth a few points of karma from the amused onlookers or fellow arguers—which might tell you that you’re making a valuable contribution, and so encourage you to keep arguing with trolls. This is my impression, at least.
Edit: (The problem being—determining the point of diminishing returns.)
Except we’re like the self-employed in this regard. You can’t do anything with karma. It won’t impress your boss. It is just a way of quantifying how valued you are by the community. An employee doesn’t really care about G at all. She cares about G because that’s what impresses the boss which furthers her own goals. But if you are your own boss you do care about G, G is just an easy way to measure it. For me at least, this is the case with karma. I can’t do anything with the number but it suggests that people like me.
So perhaps revenue sharing is a way to help address the problem. Instead of trying to come up with ways to measure what you care about, make the people beneath you care about it too. Of course this is a lot easier with money than it is with values.
Only if people care about having high karma. It’s probably fairly easy to game karma by making multiple accounts and voting yourself up, but why bother?
And do you think Goodhart’s Law, as presented in the post, applies here? That is, we should expect that eventually people (through gaming the system) end up with high karma without that in fact reliably correlating with being valued members of the community?
What? You mean Karma doesn’t reliably correlate with objective worth of the individual? Damn.
I think of it as a proxy for “valued member of the community”—if someone has karma, then people like their posts and comments. I’m mostly here to have fun and pass the time, and I happen to find discussing rationality to be fun. I don’t really expect refining the art of human rationality to be well-correlated with a popularity contest.
And do you think Goodhart’s Law, as presented in the post, applies here? That is, we should expect that eventually people (through gaming the system) end up with high karma without that in fact reliably correlating with being valued members of the community?
As a data point, one thing I’ve noticed that seems to give a disproportionate amount of karma is arguing with someone who’s wrong and unwilling to listen. It’s easy to think they might come around eventually, and each point you make against them is worth a few points of karma from the amused onlookers or fellow arguers—which might tell you that you’re making a valuable contribution, and so encourage you to keep arguing with trolls. This is my impression, at least.
Edit: (The problem being—determining the point of diminishing returns.)
Except we’re like the self-employed in this regard. You can’t do anything with karma. It won’t impress your boss. It is just a way of quantifying how valued you are by the community. An employee doesn’t really care about G at all. She cares about G because that’s what impresses the boss which furthers her own goals. But if you are your own boss you do care about G, G is just an easy way to measure it. For me at least, this is the case with karma. I can’t do anything with the number but it suggests that people like me.
So perhaps revenue sharing is a way to help address the problem. Instead of trying to come up with ways to measure what you care about, make the people beneath you care about it too. Of course this is a lot easier with money than it is with values.
My boss cares about karma.
Only if people care about having high karma. It’s probably fairly easy to game karma by making multiple accounts and voting yourself up, but why bother?
What? You mean Karma doesn’t reliably correlate with objective worth of the individual? Damn.