This is true, but I think Max is correct that karma breaks down at the edges as a measure of value. My highest karma comment was just “I like that you included this bit” on a popular post. Some of my others are great and detailed, others you could at least argue were insightful even if they were short and low-effort, but that comment was an applause light I happened to say before anyone else did. I’m glad someone said it and seems fine that it was me, but jesus christ that comment did not deserve 106 karma.
I think the applause light problem has gotten a lot better since agree/disagree voting was implemented, but it karma still has some applause light function. It doesn’t even try to track counterfactuality (“would someone else have said this if I didn’t?”) so there’s no way it could be a perfect measure of value.
My comment is a specific aside on using effort interchangeably with value, “higher-effort contributions” as an expression of approval, thereby implicitly valorizing effort. This is not good for a forum, a norm that asks for participation to be painful.
Effort is some sort of proxy for value, when there is a process that converts higher effort into higher value, but goodharting it is predictably a problem, so it’s prudent to avoid putting it in the role of a proxy. When it’s more hedonic to only participate in a lower-effort way, but still manage to select higher-value things to say, that can be vastly better than aiming for effort and ultimately leaving because effort is less comfortable.
I think I’ve noticed a few places lately where you make what’s intended to be a local correction, without engaging with the broader point being made. (I think you’ve stated explicitly this is intentional although I can’t remember offhand)
I vaguely recall a few cases where people interpreted you as making a point about the overall validity of the broader OP, with a resulting confused back-and-forth.
In this case, I’m guessing you’d agree with “One of the things that the Gems vs. Top comments feature shows is that the highest-karma comments are not always the user’s best or highest-effort contributions”, if the “or highest effort” was removed? Assuming so, I think it might be worth erring a bit more on spelling out how your local point relates to the broader point being made? (and hopefully save everyone a round trip of comments).
i.e something like “I agree highest karma comments aren’t necessarily the best, but, I want to flag that effort is cost, not value”. (Or, if you do still disagree with the broader point, or don’t have an opinion on it, maybe state that instead. But, like, make the intended scope more clear. The brevity of the initial comment seems outweighed by the subsequent back-and-forth IMO)
Nuance that frames decoupling in disclaimers feeds the norm of contextualizing, making decoupling higher-effort. Avoiding the disclaimers directly makes the asides less cumbersome, and works against the expectation that asides are something they are not.
Trivial inconveniences are key to what actually happens. Norms that make some things more inconvenient are key to what actually happens all the time. Making discussion of local validity more effortful hurts sanity of the conversation in the long term.
I actually agree with @Vladimir_Nesov’s reply to my initial comment (and wasn’t planning to reply at all until I read this, haha). I have now used reactions to indicate precisely how I feel about it.
Re-reading my own comment, I definitely didn’t intend to “implicitly valorize effort”, so if people were reading it that way, the correction / clarification was helpful.
I was more trying to say: comments and threads with the highest ROI for the reader are often not the ones with the most karma, so readers may benefit from making some effort to seek out high-value content in less-obvious places (e.g. nested comment threads, replies to less popular posts). But I’m not trying to valorize that effort either, just pointing it out as something that exists and which can have a distorting effect on karma sometimes.
This is true, but I think Max is correct that karma breaks down at the edges as a measure of value. My highest karma comment was just “I like that you included this bit” on a popular post. Some of my others are great and detailed, others you could at least argue were insightful even if they were short and low-effort, but that comment was an applause light I happened to say before anyone else did. I’m glad someone said it and seems fine that it was me, but jesus christ that comment did not deserve 106 karma.
I think the applause light problem has gotten a lot better since agree/disagree voting was implemented, but it karma still has some applause light function. It doesn’t even try to track counterfactuality (“would someone else have said this if I didn’t?”) so there’s no way it could be a perfect measure of value.
My comment is a specific aside on using effort interchangeably with value, “higher-effort contributions” as an expression of approval, thereby implicitly valorizing effort. This is not good for a forum, a norm that asks for participation to be painful.
Effort is some sort of proxy for value, when there is a process that converts higher effort into higher value, but goodharting it is predictably a problem, so it’s prudent to avoid putting it in the role of a proxy. When it’s more hedonic to only participate in a lower-effort way, but still manage to select higher-value things to say, that can be vastly better than aiming for effort and ultimately leaving because effort is less comfortable.
I think I’ve noticed a few places lately where you make what’s intended to be a local correction, without engaging with the broader point being made. (I think you’ve stated explicitly this is intentional although I can’t remember offhand)
I vaguely recall a few cases where people interpreted you as making a point about the overall validity of the broader OP, with a resulting confused back-and-forth.
In this case, I’m guessing you’d agree with “One of the things that the Gems vs. Top comments feature shows is that the highest-karma comments are not always the user’s best
or highest-effortcontributions”, if the “or highest effort” was removed? Assuming so, I think it might be worth erring a bit more on spelling out how your local point relates to the broader point being made? (and hopefully save everyone a round trip of comments).i.e something like “I agree highest karma comments aren’t necessarily the best, but, I want to flag that effort is cost, not value”. (Or, if you do still disagree with the broader point, or don’t have an opinion on it, maybe state that instead. But, like, make the intended scope more clear. The brevity of the initial comment seems outweighed by the subsequent back-and-forth IMO)
(edited a few times for hopefully more clarity)
It often doesn’t. I think allowing some misunderstanding is efficient, and nuance that makes things clearer can still be loss of efficiency.
Nuance that frames decoupling in disclaimers feeds the norm of contextualizing, making decoupling higher-effort. Avoiding the disclaimers directly makes the asides less cumbersome, and works against the expectation that asides are something they are not.
Trivial inconveniences are key to what actually happens. Norms that make some things more inconvenient are key to what actually happens all the time. Making discussion of local validity more effortful hurts sanity of the conversation in the long term.
I actually agree with @Vladimir_Nesov’s reply to my initial comment (and wasn’t planning to reply at all until I read this, haha). I have now used reactions to indicate precisely how I feel about it.
Re-reading my own comment, I definitely didn’t intend to “implicitly valorize effort”, so if people were reading it that way, the correction / clarification was helpful.
I was more trying to say: comments and threads with the highest ROI for the reader are often not the ones with the most karma, so readers may benefit from making some effort to seek out high-value content in less-obvious places (e.g. nested comment threads, replies to less popular posts). But I’m not trying to valorize that effort either, just pointing it out as something that exists and which can have a distorting effect on karma sometimes.