Even though I think the comment was useful, it doesn’t look to me like it was as useful as the typical 139 karma comment as I expect LW readers to be fairly unlikely to start popping benzos after reading this post. IMO it should’ve gotten like 30-40 karma. Even 60 wouldn’t have been too shocking to me. But 139? That’s way more karma than anything else I’ve posted.
I don’t think it warrants this much karma, and I now share @ryan_greenblatt’s concerns about the ability to vote on Quick Takes and Popular Comments introducing algorithmic virality to LW. That sort of thing is typically corrosive to epistemic hygeine as it changes the incentives of commenting more towards posting applause-lights. I don’t think that’s a good change for LW, as I think we’ve got too much group-think as it is.
Even though I think the comment was useful, it doesn’t look to me like it was as useful as the typical 139 karma comment as I expect LW readers to be fairly unlikely to start popping benzos after reading this post. IMO it should’ve gotten like 30-40 karma. Even 60 wouldn’t have been too shocking to me. But 139? That’s way more karma than anything else I’ve posted.
I don’t think it warrants this much karma, and I now share @ryan_greenblatt’s concerns about the ability to vote on Quick Takes and Popular Comments introducing algorithmic virality to LW. That sort of thing is typically corrosive to epistemic hygeine as it changes the incentives of commenting more towards posting applause-lights. I don’t think that’s a good change for LW, as I think we’ve got too much group-think as it is.
Yeah, seems right to me. If this is a recurring thing we might deactivate voting on the popular comments interface or something like that.
Here’s a quick mockup of what that might look like.
In my head you the voting UI is available after you click to expand and then scroll down to the bottom of the comment.
Added: Oops, I realize I did the quick takes, not the popular comments. Still, the relevant changes are very similar.