The fact that there are 37 comments on this post (and similar posts) is rapidly convincing me that the new −5 karma penalty for replying to downvoted things is actually a really good idea.
No, it shows that a lot of people upvote comments disagreeing with this post. Downvoted threads usually get a lot of upvotes for commenters explaining what the OP is doing wrong. It helps signal to the OP that they are wrong and that the commenter’s explanation is correct. The sad side effect, which Eliezer is so opposed to is that these upvotes encourage feeding the trolls. Up until now, I was thoroughly unconvinced that this was a problem, but this thread and this one are convincing me otherwise, which was the point of my comment.
As a side point, the grandparent is on the top comments today list too… So if your criteria for “people agree with and support this comment” is “is on Top Comments Today” then you’ve run into a paradox.
Tangentially, some of those comments are at 0 karma, and are still on that list. This doesn’t make much sense to me, but honestly I’ve never looked at that feature before, and probably will continue not to.
Tangentially, some of those comments are at 0 karma, and are still on that list. This doesn’t make much sense to me, but honestly I’ve never looked at that feature before, and probably will continue not to.
I had only looked at the first couple screenfuls of the list when replying to you, and most comments were from this thread and upvoted quite a bit. Anyway, the thing does occasionally misplace comments (e.g. heavily downvoted comments mysteriously in the middle of it), though I think that when there are lots of zero-karma comments at the bottom there really aren’t any more upvoted comments from the last 24 hours.
I understand that a lot of issues are solved, like the existence of god and so on, but I for one still haven’t gotten an appropriate explanation as to why my claim, which seems perfectly valid to me, is incorrect. That proposal is going to further hinder this kind of discussion and debate.
And as far as I can tell, I’m correct. It’s honestly very concerning to me that a bunch of lesswrongers have failed to follow this line of reasoning to its natural conclusion. Maybe I’m just not using the correct community-specific shibboleths, but the only one who’s actually followed through on the logic is gwern. I look forward to seeing his counter reply to this.
The fact that there are 37 comments on this post (and similar posts) is rapidly convincing me that the new −5 karma penalty for replying to downvoted things is actually a really good idea.
And the fact that many of those comments are on Top Comments Today shows that lots of people likely disagree with you.
No, it shows that a lot of people upvote comments disagreeing with this post. Downvoted threads usually get a lot of upvotes for commenters explaining what the OP is doing wrong. It helps signal to the OP that they are wrong and that the commenter’s explanation is correct. The sad side effect, which Eliezer is so opposed to is that these upvotes encourage feeding the trolls. Up until now, I was thoroughly unconvinced that this was a problem, but this thread and this one are convincing me otherwise, which was the point of my comment.
As a side point, the grandparent is on the top comments today list too… So if your criteria for “people agree with and support this comment” is “is on Top Comments Today” then you’ve run into a paradox.
Tangentially, some of those comments are at 0 karma, and are still on that list. This doesn’t make much sense to me, but honestly I’ve never looked at that feature before, and probably will continue not to.
I had only looked at the first couple screenfuls of the list when replying to you, and most comments were from this thread and upvoted quite a bit. Anyway, the thing does occasionally misplace comments (e.g. heavily downvoted comments mysteriously in the middle of it), though I think that when there are lots of zero-karma comments at the bottom there really aren’t any more upvoted comments from the last 24 hours.
If people thought it’s bad to feed the trolls, even when disagreeing with them, they’d downvote all replies to trolls.
I understand that a lot of issues are solved, like the existence of god and so on, but I for one still haven’t gotten an appropriate explanation as to why my claim, which seems perfectly valid to me, is incorrect. That proposal is going to further hinder this kind of discussion and debate.
And as far as I can tell, I’m correct. It’s honestly very concerning to me that a bunch of lesswrongers have failed to follow this line of reasoning to its natural conclusion. Maybe I’m just not using the correct community-specific shibboleths, but the only one who’s actually followed through on the logic is gwern. I look forward to seeing his counter reply to this.
I think you’re getting at an important problem, and have taken a step toward the solution.
How do we deal with choice in the face of fundamentally arbitrary assertions?
One way, at least, is to see if there is another equivalently arbitrary assertion that would lead you to make the opposite choice.