Eliezer said: “Even the surveys are comparing the average religious person to the average atheist, not the most advanced theologians to the most advanced rationalists.”
Very true. Wouldn’t it be a kicker if that was done and we found out that the most advanced theologians ARE the most advanced rationalists? I suspect the chances of something like this being true are higher than most of us think.
There are some brilliant theists out there. The best theologians are largely indistinguishable from the best philosophers, who are typically quite rational people, to say the least.
Still, the chances that the most advanced theologians are the most advanced rationalists—more advanced than the best philosophers, physicists, computer scientists, etc., rather than merely comparable—seems slim.
We really need to have a discussion about the polite way to downvote people. I say that the top-level comment shows the right way to moderate, with discussion about the decision to downvote, while this post above mine has been moderated badly. The comment above seems to have undergone some drive-by moderation, with no one saying what he did wrong. One line would do, “This comment downvoted because it is vapid/nonsensical/mistaken” or something. What would be really nice would be if you, anonymous moderators, would set people straight when they made a mistake (as has been done at the top-level) so that we can discuss it in public and avoid it in future. I’m not saying you should explain every downvote, but if you’re hammering someone into the negatives, at least have the guts to say why. Was the post above downvoted because it was bad or because he agreed with the bad post of the top-level commenter? If so, a simple “Your post downvoted for reasons I gave above” would have sufficed.
Downvoting without explanation smacks of laziness or vindictiveness, and degrades the quality of the discussion. If you cannot be bothered to provide an explanation for your downvote, I do not think you should be moderating at all.
I favor drive-by downvoting because otherwise we don’t really have a downvoting system. Downvotes simply shouldn’t be that awful. They’re just info about how others think you did, and in extreme cases (-4 or below) a way to get comments that newcomers shouldn’t see off the immediately visible page (but still visible if you want to probe further).
I think that it is very important to look at how much work the commenter put into their comment.
One thing that kills discussion boards is that the conversations become too cliched. Mr. A makes the standard comment. Mr. B make the standard rebuttal. Mr. A makes the standard defence. Mr. B makes the traditional follow up.
When Mr. A makes the standard comment, is that for real, or is it just trolling? Tough question. I think that there comes a point at which one has to get tough and do drive-by downvoting on valid, on topic comments, because they are common place and threaten to destroy the discussion by making it too familiar, swamping the discussion with the banal.
The other side to this it if Mr. A makes a three paragraph comment. 1)His point. 2)The standard rebuttal. 3)Why he thinks his points survives the standard rebuttal. At this point we know that Mr. A is not a troll. He has put in too much work to count coup on getting a bite. He is making a effort to move the discussion on briskly so that it can reach unbroken ground. He has earned an explanation of why his comment is crap, and I would say that he has earned the right to an actual typed in criticism instead of a down vote.
There are other kinds of work worthy of respect. It is easy to make a long general response, either by being a fast typist and rattling it off, or by use of cut and paste. A comment is worthy or respect if the commenter has taken the time to tailor it so that it is clear how the general point applies to the particular case under discussion. Gathering up and checking relevant links eats time. If some-one has gone to the trouble of decorating his comment with relevant links, that should earn him immunity from drive-by down voting.
One the other hand, there is discussion in the blog sphere of turning off comments altogether. Some people say that if the comments are there they feel obliged to read them, but actually they are mostly the same-old-same-old and a waste of time. Which ends up with the reader feeling that they are wasting their time reading the blog and giving up altogether. Short, mildly entertaining, chitchatty comments that fill the fleeting hour with work not done will eventually kill LessWrong. I think readers should be very free with downvotes for lightweight comments.
Roko said “do you have any reason or evidence pointing your conclusion?”
First of all, I wasn’t concluding anything. As I said, it’s just a suspicion. Is there a rule that all speculation on this web site is downvoted?
My suspicion comes from being impressed by the work of Ken Wilber. He is a case in point that I am thinking of. Here is a brief introduction to his work:
I read the brief introduction, and was thoroughly unimpressed. Maybe there’s a kernel of truth somewhere but you’d think a brief introduction would make it more visible… saying “scientism” over and over, dismissing reductionism as calling things “nothing but” their components over and over… apparently he has split things we can know up into 2x2=4 parts, and “Yet in erasing left-hand interiors, modernity also erased meaning, purpose, and significance from our view of the universe, life, and ourselves. For meaning, purpose, and significance, subjective value, and all other qualitative distinctions are interior left-hand events. Gone was any sense of value or purpose for life. Instead humans began to see themselves merely as meaningless blobs of protoplasm, adrift on a tiny speck of dust in a remote unchartered corner of one of countless billions of galaxies.”
It seems science stole Ken Wilber’s rainbows. Bad scientists! Or wait, I mean:
“scientists (or better, scientismists)”
In fairness, maybe it’s just Roger Walsh (the author of the introduction) that failed to impress me enough to get me to read Wilber.
I didn’t downvote you, but I think such downvoting as you’ve received has been not just because you were speculating but because you were making what on the face of it is a very implausible suggestion without any indication of why it might be true. That’s kinda rude: if you have some reason for thinking it’s likely to be true, why aren’t you at least hinting at it? and if you haven’t, what’s the value in telling us?
Ken Wilber’s site is annoying. The link you gave, rather than just serving up the damn PDF file, s it in the page, which means that on my (admittedly slightly weird) system I can’t read it. And his front page is Flash-only, ditto. However, I grabbed the file at http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/SS-Walsh.pdf and also looked at his Wikipedia entry; from these, my own estimate of his likelihood of being one of “the most advanced rationalists” is extremely low. (Not that you need care what my estimate of that likelihood is.)
Downvoted for unjustified sensationalism. Sure, people in mental asylums might be good rationalists, but do you have any reason or evidence pointing your conclusion?
I think this comparison is a bit unfair. Do you really think the rationality of the average mental patient is remotely comparable to that of the average theologian?
The proposition you quote doesn’t need a rationale to the same degree that “advanced theologians might be the best rationalists” does, just like “typing random gibberish for comments is a waste of everybody’s time” is even less in need of justification.
The difference between them is the degree to which the justifications are likely to be obvious to other readers and the degree to which other readers are likely to agree or disagree.
The proposition you quote doesn’t need a rationale to the same degree that “advanced theologians might be the best rationalists” does
All else being equal, an assertion requires more justification than a speculation. I also disagree with Loren’s estimate, but given that I think your statement is just plain wrong, I’d sooner ask you for a justification than Loren.
The difference between them is the degree to which the justifications are likely to be obvious to other readers and the degree to which other readers are likely to agree or disagree.
As a general rule I disagree with this: I don’t think I should be expected to know how likely others are to agree with me or find my reasoning obvious. That said, Loren did anticipate such a disagreement, so you have a point.
You aren’t expected to know how likely others are to agree or whether they will find your reasoning obvious. However, I would argue that you should try to estimate how likely others are to disagree and to give some form of explanation if you think they’re likely not to agree and not to see what your explanation would be. Most of us, most of the time, are reasonably good at making such estimates, so following this guideline makes discussion more efficient and results in better communication.
I’m skeptical of the claim of reasonable goodness if you mean it to apply to estimates of obviousness, but I do find myself agreeing that we should try to anticipate disagreement for the sake of efficient communication.
I meant it to apply to both. I agree that estimating obviousness depends very much on the individuals and topics involved, and factors like inferential distance, but we still have a huge common store of knowledge and thought processes by virtue of the psychological unity of humankind… On a site like LW, we can also all be expected to be somewhat familiar with the many topics that are discussed again and again. I’m not saying we can get anywhere near perfect, but I think we do pretty well. Most of the time that somebody says something for reasons that others will find non-obvious, they correctly anticipate this and give justification. This whole thread started because somebody didn’t anticipate and didn’t give justifications, which is somewhat unusual.
I found it to be sensationalism, so I’m not surprised it got downvoted. I would have found it interesting like you if Loren had including his reasoning for that remark which he posted in his followup post.
Eliezer said: “Even the surveys are comparing the average religious person to the average atheist, not the most advanced theologians to the most advanced rationalists.”
Very true. Wouldn’t it be a kicker if that was done and we found out that the most advanced theologians ARE the most advanced rationalists? I suspect the chances of something like this being true are higher than most of us think.
There are some brilliant theists out there. The best theologians are largely indistinguishable from the best philosophers, who are typically quite rational people, to say the least.
Still, the chances that the most advanced theologians are the most advanced rationalists—more advanced than the best philosophers, physicists, computer scientists, etc., rather than merely comparable—seems slim.
We really need to have a discussion about the polite way to downvote people. I say that the top-level comment shows the right way to moderate, with discussion about the decision to downvote, while this post above mine has been moderated badly. The comment above seems to have undergone some drive-by moderation, with no one saying what he did wrong. One line would do, “This comment downvoted because it is vapid/nonsensical/mistaken” or something. What would be really nice would be if you, anonymous moderators, would set people straight when they made a mistake (as has been done at the top-level) so that we can discuss it in public and avoid it in future. I’m not saying you should explain every downvote, but if you’re hammering someone into the negatives, at least have the guts to say why. Was the post above downvoted because it was bad or because he agreed with the bad post of the top-level commenter? If so, a simple “Your post downvoted for reasons I gave above” would have sufficed.
Downvoting without explanation smacks of laziness or vindictiveness, and degrades the quality of the discussion. If you cannot be bothered to provide an explanation for your downvote, I do not think you should be moderating at all.
I favor drive-by downvoting because otherwise we don’t really have a downvoting system. Downvotes simply shouldn’t be that awful. They’re just info about how others think you did, and in extreme cases (-4 or below) a way to get comments that newcomers shouldn’t see off the immediately visible page (but still visible if you want to probe further).
I think that it is very important to look at how much work the commenter put into their comment.
One thing that kills discussion boards is that the conversations become too cliched. Mr. A makes the standard comment. Mr. B make the standard rebuttal. Mr. A makes the standard defence. Mr. B makes the traditional follow up.
When Mr. A makes the standard comment, is that for real, or is it just trolling? Tough question. I think that there comes a point at which one has to get tough and do drive-by downvoting on valid, on topic comments, because they are common place and threaten to destroy the discussion by making it too familiar, swamping the discussion with the banal.
The other side to this it if Mr. A makes a three paragraph comment. 1)His point. 2)The standard rebuttal. 3)Why he thinks his points survives the standard rebuttal. At this point we know that Mr. A is not a troll. He has put in too much work to count coup on getting a bite. He is making a effort to move the discussion on briskly so that it can reach unbroken ground. He has earned an explanation of why his comment is crap, and I would say that he has earned the right to an actual typed in criticism instead of a down vote.
There are other kinds of work worthy of respect. It is easy to make a long general response, either by being a fast typist and rattling it off, or by use of cut and paste. A comment is worthy or respect if the commenter has taken the time to tailor it so that it is clear how the general point applies to the particular case under discussion. Gathering up and checking relevant links eats time. If some-one has gone to the trouble of decorating his comment with relevant links, that should earn him immunity from drive-by down voting.
One the other hand, there is discussion in the blog sphere of turning off comments altogether. Some people say that if the comments are there they feel obliged to read them, but actually they are mostly the same-old-same-old and a waste of time. Which ends up with the reader feeling that they are wasting their time reading the blog and giving up altogether. Short, mildly entertaining, chitchatty comments that fill the fleeting hour with work not done will eventually kill LessWrong. I think readers should be very free with downvotes for lightweight comments.
IAWYC.
Any reasons for that suspicion?
Roko said “do you have any reason or evidence pointing your conclusion?”
First of all, I wasn’t concluding anything. As I said, it’s just a suspicion. Is there a rule that all speculation on this web site is downvoted?
My suspicion comes from being impressed by the work of Ken Wilber. He is a case in point that I am thinking of. Here is a brief introduction to his work:
http://www.kenwilber.com/writings/read_pdf/91
I read the brief introduction, and was thoroughly unimpressed. Maybe there’s a kernel of truth somewhere but you’d think a brief introduction would make it more visible… saying “scientism” over and over, dismissing reductionism as calling things “nothing but” their components over and over… apparently he has split things we can know up into 2x2=4 parts, and “Yet in erasing left-hand interiors, modernity also erased meaning, purpose, and significance from our view of the universe, life, and ourselves. For meaning, purpose, and significance, subjective value, and all other qualitative distinctions are interior left-hand events. Gone was any sense of value or purpose for life. Instead humans began to see themselves merely as meaningless blobs of protoplasm, adrift on a tiny speck of dust in a remote unchartered corner of one of countless billions of galaxies.”
It seems science stole Ken Wilber’s rainbows. Bad scientists! Or wait, I mean:
“scientists (or better, scientismists)”
In fairness, maybe it’s just Roger Walsh (the author of the introduction) that failed to impress me enough to get me to read Wilber.
I didn’t downvote you, but I think such downvoting as you’ve received has been not just because you were speculating but because you were making what on the face of it is a very implausible suggestion without any indication of why it might be true. That’s kinda rude: if you have some reason for thinking it’s likely to be true, why aren’t you at least hinting at it? and if you haven’t, what’s the value in telling us?
Ken Wilber’s site is annoying. The link you gave, rather than just serving up the damn PDF file, s it in the page, which means that on my (admittedly slightly weird) system I can’t read it. And his front page is Flash-only, ditto. However, I grabbed the file at http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/SS-Walsh.pdf and also looked at his Wikipedia entry; from these, my own estimate of his likelihood of being one of “the most advanced rationalists” is extremely low. (Not that you need care what my estimate of that likelihood is.)
Downvoted for unjustified sensationalism. Sure, people in mental asylums might be good rationalists, but do you have any reason or evidence pointing your conclusion?
I think this comparison is a bit unfair. Do you really think the rationality of the average mental patient is remotely comparable to that of the average theologian?
No, but the difference between a statement that’s 99% silly and a statement that’s 99.9% silly is only a negligible .9 silly points.
Apparently informing others of an estimate you find unusual gets you downvoted. How unfortunate. I found it an interesting bit of speculation.
I think the downvotes are because you gave no rationale. Speculation without even saying why you think it is plausible is worthless.
I disagree with this, and note that you did not provide a rationale.
The proposition you quote doesn’t need a rationale to the same degree that “advanced theologians might be the best rationalists” does, just like “typing random gibberish for comments is a waste of everybody’s time” is even less in need of justification.
The difference between them is the degree to which the justifications are likely to be obvious to other readers and the degree to which other readers are likely to agree or disagree.
All else being equal, an assertion requires more justification than a speculation. I also disagree with Loren’s estimate, but given that I think your statement is just plain wrong, I’d sooner ask you for a justification than Loren.
As a general rule I disagree with this: I don’t think I should be expected to know how likely others are to agree with me or find my reasoning obvious. That said, Loren did anticipate such a disagreement, so you have a point.
You aren’t expected to know how likely others are to agree or whether they will find your reasoning obvious. However, I would argue that you should try to estimate how likely others are to disagree and to give some form of explanation if you think they’re likely not to agree and not to see what your explanation would be. Most of us, most of the time, are reasonably good at making such estimates, so following this guideline makes discussion more efficient and results in better communication.
I’m skeptical of the claim of reasonable goodness if you mean it to apply to estimates of obviousness, but I do find myself agreeing that we should try to anticipate disagreement for the sake of efficient communication.
I meant it to apply to both. I agree that estimating obviousness depends very much on the individuals and topics involved, and factors like inferential distance, but we still have a huge common store of knowledge and thought processes by virtue of the psychological unity of humankind… On a site like LW, we can also all be expected to be somewhat familiar with the many topics that are discussed again and again. I’m not saying we can get anywhere near perfect, but I think we do pretty well. Most of the time that somebody says something for reasons that others will find non-obvious, they correctly anticipate this and give justification. This whole thread started because somebody didn’t anticipate and didn’t give justifications, which is somewhat unusual.
I found it to be sensationalism, so I’m not surprised it got downvoted. I would have found it interesting like you if Loren had including his reasoning for that remark which he posted in his followup post.