Bayesian reasoning means that April Fool’s is by far the worst day of the year to do something that you wish to be taken as not purely a joke, especially something that is playful.
Given that the phrasing of your reply implies[1] that this isn’t just a joke, I have additional concerns:
Calling anything real-money-related ‘playful’ is a yellow flag, and being confused as to why anyone might consider someone this a yellow flag is a red flag [2].
You are discouraging anonymous[3] participants compared to non-anonymous participants, due to the difficulty in anonymously transferring money. This disincentivizes rational discussion.
You are further discouraging throwaways and anonymous participants compared to non-anonymous participants, due to the threshold for withdrawals. This also disincentivizes rational discussion.
You are yet further discouraging anonymous participants compared to non-anonymous participants, due to the signaling that you are willing to dox people. This too disincentivizes rational discussion.
This unilaterally moves voting from a signal of ‘do I wish for this to be more visible[4]’ to ‘do I wish the person who made this comment to get more money’. These are not the same thing. In particular, this discourages upvoting valid-and-insightful comments by participants that I believe are doing more harm than good on the net, and encourages upvoting invalid-or-uninsightful comments by participants that I believe are doing more good than harm on the net, however both of these overall disincentivize rational discussion[5].
This seriously disincentivizes ‘risky’ comments by accounts that have a good reputation. This can easily result in strategic-voting-like suboptimal outcomes.
Doing this and then calling them Good Hearttokens implies that you explicitly brought up the connection to Goodhart’s Law and then decided to push for it anyway.
Likely more, but I am too frustrated by this to continue right now.
I seriously hope you understand why. If you don’t, I have to seriously re-examine this forum[6]. I might note that the main defining feature of ‘play’ is that, unlike most things which are externally motivated, play is intrinsically motivated, whereas the classic example of an extrinsic motivator is… money.
I am aware this forum isn’t particularly anonymous. And yes, I consider it a strike against it. And yes, there are valid[7] points I have self-censored as a result.
Even the base ‘number goes up’ of standard upvotes/downvotes is bad enough, with discussions about the problems and possibilities as to how to mitigate this on this very site.
A forum whose main distinguishing feature is supposedly the pursuit of rationality[8] where of its few[9] admins doesn’t get something this basic and was able to make this much of a change without consulting to see what they were missing is, uh, not great.
This seriously disincentivizes ‘risky’ comments by accounts that have a good reputation. This can easily result in strategic-voting-like suboptimal outcomes.
Highlighting this bit. I hadn’t thought about this at all.
Bayesian reasoning means that April Fool’s is by far the worst day of the year to do something that you wish to be taken as not purely a joke, especially something that is playful.
Given that the phrasing of your reply implies[1] that this isn’t just a joke, I have additional concerns:
Calling anything real-money-related ‘playful’ is a yellow flag, and being confused as to why anyone might consider someone this a yellow flag is a red flag [2].
You are discouraging anonymous[3] participants compared to non-anonymous participants, due to the difficulty in anonymously transferring money. This disincentivizes rational discussion.
You are further discouraging throwaways and anonymous participants compared to non-anonymous participants, due to the threshold for withdrawals. This also disincentivizes rational discussion.
You are yet further discouraging anonymous participants compared to non-anonymous participants, due to the signaling that you are willing to dox people. This too disincentivizes rational discussion.
This unilaterally moves voting from a signal of ‘do I wish for this to be more visible[4]’ to ‘do I wish the person who made this comment to get more money’. These are not the same thing. In particular, this discourages upvoting valid-and-insightful comments by participants that I believe are doing more harm than good on the net, and encourages upvoting invalid-or-uninsightful comments by participants that I believe are doing more good than harm on the net, however both of these overall disincentivize rational discussion[5].
This seriously disincentivizes ‘risky’ comments by accounts that have a good reputation. This can easily result in strategic-voting-like suboptimal outcomes.
Doing this and then calling them Good Heart tokens implies that you explicitly brought up the connection to Goodhart’s Law and then decided to push for it anyway.
Likely more, but I am too frustrated by this to continue right now.
But doesn’t explicitly state, I note.
I seriously hope you understand why. If you don’t, I have to seriously re-examine this forum[6]. I might note that the main defining feature of ‘play’ is that, unlike most things which are externally motivated, play is intrinsically motivated, whereas the classic example of an extrinsic motivator is… money.
I am aware this forum isn’t particularly anonymous. And yes, I consider it a strike against it. And yes, there are valid[7] points I have self-censored as a result.
Of course, you can argue about this precise definition too. The point is, these two definitions are not the same.
Even the base ‘number goes up’ of standard upvotes/downvotes is bad enough, with discussions about the problems and possibilities as to how to mitigate this on this very site.
A forum whose main distinguishing feature is supposedly the pursuit of rationality[8] where of its few[9] admins doesn’t get something this basic and was able to make this much of a change without consulting to see what they were missing is, uh, not great.
At least to the best of my knowledge. Obviously I haven’t been able to check by posting said items on this forum.
“To that end, LessWrong is a place to 1) develop and train rationality, and 2) apply one’s rationality to real-world problems.”, from https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJ2haLkcGeLtTWaD5/welcome-to-lesswrong
I don’t actually know offhand how many.
Highlighting this bit. I hadn’t thought about this at all.
(I am not part of ‘the team’ btw.)