Does anybody else get the sense that in terms of karma, anecdotes seem to be more popular than statistical analysis when rating comments? It seems like a clear and common source of bias to me. Thoughts?
Same. I’d guess that ceteris paribus, comments based on statistical analysis would get more upvotes than anecdotes; it’s just that ceteris ain’t paribus.
A big part of a comment’s karma is how many (logged-in) people read the comment, and in a given thread early comments tend to get more readers than late comments. Assuming that posting a statistical analysis is more time-consuming than posting an anecdote (and I think on average it is), comments with statistical analysis are systematically disadvantaged because they’re posted later.
(This has definitely been my anecdotal experience. People seem to like comments where I dredge up statistics, but because I often post them as a thread winds down, or even after it’s gone fallow, they’re often less upvoted than their more-poorly-sourced parents.)
Isn’t “karma” just a fancy word for “how much I like this post/comment”? I mean at registration I didn’t get questions like:
(1) How much of your income have you donated to charity? [1]
(2) What is more dangerous to humanity? God’s rage, or an out-of-control AI? [2]
(3) Which of the sequences is your favorite? Name two. [3]
[1] You must enter a number above 100%
[2] AI means artificial intelligence, but you’re supposed to know that.
[3] “Favorite” means one, and it asks for two; clearly the write answer is to point out the grammatical error.
So clearly not everyone here is as rational as they should be, or at least LW-rational.
Moreover, that’s only by a per-person basis. On comments with more upvotes, it would probably be the community’s outlook on the comment/post. Same with downvotes. Just a matter of scale, really.
Does anybody else get the sense that in terms of karma, anecdotes seem to be more popular than statistical analysis when rating comments? It seems like a clear and common source of bias to me. Thoughts?
Are you basing this observation on anecdotes or on statistical analysis? :-P
Bikeshed effect
I get the opposite sense.
Same. I’d guess that ceteris paribus, comments based on statistical analysis would get more upvotes than anecdotes; it’s just that ceteris ain’t paribus.
A big part of a comment’s karma is how many (logged-in) people read the comment, and in a given thread early comments tend to get more readers than late comments. Assuming that posting a statistical analysis is more time-consuming than posting an anecdote (and I think on average it is), comments with statistical analysis are systematically disadvantaged because they’re posted later.
(This has definitely been my anecdotal experience. People seem to like comments where I dredge up statistics, but because I often post them as a thread winds down, or even after it’s gone fallow, they’re often less upvoted than their more-poorly-sourced parents.)
Isn’t “karma” just a fancy word for “how much I like this post/comment”? I mean at registration I didn’t get questions like:
(1) How much of your income have you donated to charity? [1]
(2) What is more dangerous to humanity? God’s rage, or an out-of-control AI? [2]
(3) Which of the sequences is your favorite? Name two. [3]
[1] You must enter a number above 100%
[2] AI means artificial intelligence, but you’re supposed to know that.
[3] “Favorite” means one, and it asks for two; clearly the write answer is to point out the grammatical error.
So clearly not everyone here is as rational as they should be, or at least LW-rational.
Moreover, that’s only by a per-person basis. On comments with more upvotes, it would probably be the community’s outlook on the comment/post. Same with downvotes. Just a matter of scale, really.