I’m curious why this has been downvoted. Does it mean people don’t believe you? I think this is another illustration of why the voting system sucks. Your protestations of innocence are now hidden and no-one is fronting up with an argument. I know you have been upvoted and I upvoted a bunch of posts myself once because I was annoyed that you were getting systematically downvoted to, I think, rate-limit your posts (which you were annoyed about to) and to hide them (which makes it a pain reading threads). Oh, the sort of silliness the kharma system leads to!
I’m curious why this has been downvoted. Does it mean people don’t believe you?
I presume it was a reaction to the argument that Perplexed was a troll. Had curi made the same protestation of innocence without adding the personal attack, it might not have been downvoted at all.
How could he have thought it worthwhile to use sock puppets to raise his karma enough to make that posting? Was he really trying to engage in instruction and consciousness raising? Or was he just trying to assert intellectual superiority?
Trollish is a good description of this, so I think curi’s comment was accurate. And, note, the comment in which the above insult appears in was upvoted.
Trollish is a good description of this, so I think curi’s comment was accurate.
Whether Perplexed was trolling depends on Perplexed’s intent. Perplexed probably believed what he was saying, so he probably did not intend to accuse curi unjustly. Had he known curi was innocent and then said it anyway in order to upset him, then he would have been trolling.
The issue isn’t whether he honestly believed it but that he came up with a rather harsh claim without evidence.
He did have evidence. Perhaps what you mean is that there were alternative hypotheses explaining the same evidence. But the existence of alternative hypotheses does not stop the evidence being evidence. There are always alternative hypotheses, and yet there is evidence. Therefore the existence of alternatives does not prevent something from being evidence.
Consider the following three hypotheses:
A) Nobody was systematically voting up your posts.
B) You were systematically voting up your own posts.
C) Somebody else was systematically voting up your posts.
The evidence includes the fact that after having your karma voted down to oblivion, your karma shot up for no obvious reason, allowing you to post a main article to the front page. This evidence decreases the probability of hypothesis A, and simultaneously increases the probabilities of B and C, by Bayesian updating. I don’t know what the Popperian account is precisely, but since it is not completely insane then I believe it leads to roughly the same scientific result, though stated in Popperian terms, eg without talking about the probability of the hypothesis. The evidence is in any case inconsistent with A, and consistent with both B and C, or less consistent with A than with B or C, however you want to put it, and thus is evidence for each as contrasted with A.
As I recall, you yourself proposed hypothesis C. Do you claim that you proposed a hypothesis without evidence, and that this was a bad thing? For that would seem to follow from your own logic. An alternative hypothesis consistent with your own experience is that you did it yourself and just forgot, call this C1. C1 is highly improbable, but to say such a thing is nothing other than to say that the prior of C1 is extremely low, which is Bayesian thinking, which I understand you disapprove of.
In any case, your complaint that he offered a conjecture in advance of evidence is odd coming from a Popperian. Deutsch the Popperian writes that conjectures are not “derived” from anything. They are guesses—bold conjectures, so he writes. Experience is not the source from which conjectures are derived. Its main use is to choose between conjectures that have already been guessed. So he writes. But now you complain about a conjecture offered—so you claim—in advance of evidence!
And whence comes this new appreciation of yours for social niceties such as holding one’s tongue and not blurting out uncomfortable truths, or, since we are after all fallible (as Popper says), uncomfortable guesses at the truth? Did you not claim that we should all be beyond such social niceties, such sacrifices of the bold pursuit of truth to mere matters of “style”? Did you not yourself explain that you deliberately post in a style that does not pull any punches, and that anyone who complains merely proves that they are not worthy of your time? So why the apparent change of heart?
As I recall, you yourself proposed hypothesis C. Do you claim that you proposed a hypothesis without evidence, and that this was a bad thing? For that would seem to follow from your own logic.
Of course, they presumably had additional evidence regarding the truth or falsehood of B (leaving aside highly unlikely scenarios like them performing acts of which they were unaware), which other people don’t have. So the situation isn’t quite symmetrical.
(Not disagreeing with your main point. Or, in fact, engaging with it at all. Just nitpicking.)
You agree that’s a bad way to approach discussion, right?
Maybe I used to agree, but maybe a week of posts like this have gradually persuaded me, through persuasive arguments, otherwise. Quoting from you:
There were a few people I inspired to flame me. I know I provoked them. I didn’t actually do anything that deserves being flamed. But I broke etiquette some. It’s not a surprising result. Flaming me for some of the things I did is pretty normal. (Btw a few of the flames were deleted or edited a bit after being posted.) Some people would regard that as disaster. I regard is as success: I stopped speaking to those people. If I’d been super polite they might have pretended to have a civil discussion with me for longer while having rather irrational thoughts going through their head. The more they hide emotional reactions (for example), while actually having them, the more discussion can go wrong for unstated reasons.
But now you complain:
very rude
Oh great master of the breaking of etiquette. I am confused!
Then when swimmer963 wrote:
I hate confrontation
You responded:
You could change this. It’s not human nature. It’s not your genes. It’s a cultural bias. A very common one. And it’s important because criticism is the main tool by which we learn. When all criticism has to be made subtle, indirect, formal, filled with equivocation about whether the person stating it really means it, or various other things, then it slows down learning a lot.
Have you fallen into cultural bias?
Then when swimmer963 wrote:
I have this annoying tendency to care about anything that anyone says to or about me.
You responded:
You know, Feynman had this problem. He got over it. Maybe reading his books would help you. One of them is titled like “What do you care what other people think?”
Is it time for you to re-read this book?
I am confused. If you want others to respect some very basic ground rules of etiquette, then why did you preach the opposite only days ago?
It’s not that I care what he thinks, I just think posting crazy factual libels is a bad idea.
I never said one should ignore all etiquette of all types. There’s objective limits on what’s a good or bad idea in this area.
I’m not sure what you hope to gain by arguing this point with me. Do you just want to make me concede something in a debate or are you hoping to learn something?
I already know that etiquette is important, and why. I am pointing out that you also know that it is important when you are the target of a breach. So, even the one who preaches that etiquette be set aside in the bold pursuit of truth, does not really believe it, not when it’s his own ox being gored.
You have all along been oblivious to the reactions of others—admittedly so, proudly so. You have argued that your social obliviousness is a virtue, an intellectual strength, because such things as etiquette are mere obstacles in the road to reality. But this is mistaken, and even you intuit that it is, once the shoe is on the other foot—that is, once you stand in the place of those that you have antagonized and exasperated for an entire week. Your philosophy of antagonism serves no purpose but to justify your own failure or refusal to treat others well.
I don’t need you to concede anything. What I’ve done here is put together the pieces and given you a chance to respond.
I never said one should ignore all etiquette of all types. There’s objective limits on what’s a good or bad idea in this area.
Uh huh. Yet you offer no guidelines as to what is allowed, and what is off limits, after a week of preaching and practicing. Or to be more precise, you do offer a guide of sorts: you are off limits, and everyone else is fair game. What you are inclined to break, is okay to break. What you, for whatever reason, don’t break, nobody else must break.
I’m curious why this has been downvoted. Does it mean people don’t believe you? I think this is another illustration of why the voting system sucks. Your protestations of innocence are now hidden and no-one is fronting up with an argument. I know you have been upvoted and I upvoted a bunch of posts myself once because I was annoyed that you were getting systematically downvoted to, I think, rate-limit your posts (which you were annoyed about to) and to hide them (which makes it a pain reading threads). Oh, the sort of silliness the kharma system leads to!
you can turn off hiding of low scoring comments in your preferences.
I presume it was a reaction to the argument that Perplexed was a troll. Had curi made the same protestation of innocence without adding the personal attack, it might not have been downvoted at all.
curi was responding to this:
Trollish is a good description of this, so I think curi’s comment was accurate. And, note, the comment in which the above insult appears in was upvoted.
Whether Perplexed was trolling depends on Perplexed’s intent. Perplexed probably believed what he was saying, so he probably did not intend to accuse curi unjustly. Had he known curi was innocent and then said it anyway in order to upset him, then he would have been trolling.
The issue isn’t whether he honestly believed it but that he came up with a rather harsh claim without evidence.
He did have evidence. Perhaps what you mean is that there were alternative hypotheses explaining the same evidence. But the existence of alternative hypotheses does not stop the evidence being evidence. There are always alternative hypotheses, and yet there is evidence. Therefore the existence of alternatives does not prevent something from being evidence.
Consider the following three hypotheses:
A) Nobody was systematically voting up your posts.
B) You were systematically voting up your own posts.
C) Somebody else was systematically voting up your posts.
The evidence includes the fact that after having your karma voted down to oblivion, your karma shot up for no obvious reason, allowing you to post a main article to the front page. This evidence decreases the probability of hypothesis A, and simultaneously increases the probabilities of B and C, by Bayesian updating. I don’t know what the Popperian account is precisely, but since it is not completely insane then I believe it leads to roughly the same scientific result, though stated in Popperian terms, eg without talking about the probability of the hypothesis. The evidence is in any case inconsistent with A, and consistent with both B and C, or less consistent with A than with B or C, however you want to put it, and thus is evidence for each as contrasted with A.
As I recall, you yourself proposed hypothesis C. Do you claim that you proposed a hypothesis without evidence, and that this was a bad thing? For that would seem to follow from your own logic. An alternative hypothesis consistent with your own experience is that you did it yourself and just forgot, call this C1. C1 is highly improbable, but to say such a thing is nothing other than to say that the prior of C1 is extremely low, which is Bayesian thinking, which I understand you disapprove of.
In any case, your complaint that he offered a conjecture in advance of evidence is odd coming from a Popperian. Deutsch the Popperian writes that conjectures are not “derived” from anything. They are guesses—bold conjectures, so he writes. Experience is not the source from which conjectures are derived. Its main use is to choose between conjectures that have already been guessed. So he writes. But now you complain about a conjecture offered—so you claim—in advance of evidence!
And whence comes this new appreciation of yours for social niceties such as holding one’s tongue and not blurting out uncomfortable truths, or, since we are after all fallible (as Popper says), uncomfortable guesses at the truth? Did you not claim that we should all be beyond such social niceties, such sacrifices of the bold pursuit of truth to mere matters of “style”? Did you not yourself explain that you deliberately post in a style that does not pull any punches, and that anyone who complains merely proves that they are not worthy of your time? So why the apparent change of heart?
Of course, they presumably had additional evidence regarding the truth or falsehood of B (leaving aside highly unlikely scenarios like them performing acts of which they were unaware), which other people don’t have. So the situation isn’t quite symmetrical.
(Not disagreeing with your main point. Or, in fact, engaging with it at all. Just nitpicking.)
A very rude one. The problem wasn’t that it was a conjecture but that it was a personal attack.
Here let me demonstrate:
You agree that’s a bad way to approach discussion, right?
Maybe I used to agree, but maybe a week of posts like this have gradually persuaded me, through persuasive arguments, otherwise. Quoting from you:
But now you complain:
Oh great master of the breaking of etiquette. I am confused!
Then when swimmer963 wrote:
You responded:
Have you fallen into cultural bias?
Then when swimmer963 wrote:
You responded:
Is it time for you to re-read this book?
I am confused. If you want others to respect some very basic ground rules of etiquette, then why did you preach the opposite only days ago?
It’s not that I care what he thinks, I just think posting crazy factual libels is a bad idea.
I never said one should ignore all etiquette of all types. There’s objective limits on what’s a good or bad idea in this area.
I’m not sure what you hope to gain by arguing this point with me. Do you just want to make me concede something in a debate or are you hoping to learn something?
I already know that etiquette is important, and why. I am pointing out that you also know that it is important when you are the target of a breach. So, even the one who preaches that etiquette be set aside in the bold pursuit of truth, does not really believe it, not when it’s his own ox being gored.
You have all along been oblivious to the reactions of others—admittedly so, proudly so. You have argued that your social obliviousness is a virtue, an intellectual strength, because such things as etiquette are mere obstacles in the road to reality. But this is mistaken, and even you intuit that it is, once the shoe is on the other foot—that is, once you stand in the place of those that you have antagonized and exasperated for an entire week. Your philosophy of antagonism serves no purpose but to justify your own failure or refusal to treat others well.
I don’t need you to concede anything. What I’ve done here is put together the pieces and given you a chance to respond.
Uh huh. Yet you offer no guidelines as to what is allowed, and what is off limits, after a week of preaching and practicing. Or to be more precise, you do offer a guide of sorts: you are off limits, and everyone else is fair game. What you are inclined to break, is okay to break. What you, for whatever reason, don’t break, nobody else must break.