Sometimes the nitpicks are of the form “you don’t have enough evidence for X” or “you didn’t cite a source” followed by lots of downvoting, when a reasonable prior probability distribution would assign enough probability to X to make the proceeding analysis interesting and useful.
It’s very hard to make any kind of interesting claim whilst covering yourself against every possible ‘citation needed’ nitpick.
Normally we think of the burden of proof resting on writers. But that is just a social convention. I haven’t heard a consequentialist justification for this.
Pros of having the burden of proof be on the person who introduces an idea:
The person who introduces an idea generally gets the associated status. Looking up citations is tedious compared to having ideas, at least for me. By putting the burden of proof on the person who has the idea, we create a status incentive for someone to actually look up citations.
The toplevel post vs comment distinction facilitates working harder to create posts than comments. It seems a little awkward to have 2 posts, one that introduces an idea and a later one which provides citations.
Cons:
Maybe some people are better at looking up citations than others.
Maybe the choice is between sharing citation-free ideas and not having them shared at all.
Maybe we think an idea development process that involves bouncing ideas against others early on works better. Before looking up citations, maybe it’s best to check if the idea is worth testing, or if we should really be looking at a slightly different hypothesis. Maybe the idea will be shot down quickly and decisively by a commenter even if lots of citations are provided.
Oh I agree, I was going off on a tangent with my thing (considering the specific scenario where everyone agrees that citations should be looked up at some point)
Posting or commenting imposes a cost in the form of a claim on the attention of your readers. It also provides a benefit in the form of information.
Perhaps the burden on writers should simply be to justify that their writing is relevant enough, and likely enough to be correct, to justify making this claim on readers’ time and attention. This burden should be higher on shared fora than personal blogs, higher on posts than comments, higher for parent comments than replies, higher for off-topic than on-topic posts, higher for speculation than for fact posts.
I think there should be a burden on the writer to make a coherent point, that is novel and either interesting or useful. That could include evidence for the central claims they are making, or just a logical argument using existing widely believed assumptions.
I don’t think that means having citations for every single claim, especially ones that are reasonable, common-sense claims. If a commenter wants to present strong evidence that commonsense claim X is false, that’s fine, but what I have seen (at least a few years ago) is someone merely pointing out that you don’t have evidence causing the writer to get downvoted and lose the benefits of being promoted or getting karma.
Sometimes the nitpicks are of the form “you don’t have enough evidence for X” or “you didn’t cite a source” followed by lots of downvoting, when a reasonable prior probability distribution would assign enough probability to X to make the proceeding analysis interesting and useful.
It’s very hard to make any kind of interesting claim whilst covering yourself against every possible ‘citation needed’ nitpick.
Normally we think of the burden of proof resting on writers. But that is just a social convention. I haven’t heard a consequentialist justification for this.
Pros of having the burden of proof be on the person who introduces an idea:
The person who introduces an idea generally gets the associated status. Looking up citations is tedious compared to having ideas, at least for me. By putting the burden of proof on the person who has the idea, we create a status incentive for someone to actually look up citations.
The toplevel post vs comment distinction facilitates working harder to create posts than comments. It seems a little awkward to have 2 posts, one that introduces an idea and a later one which provides citations.
Cons:
Maybe some people are better at looking up citations than others.
Maybe the choice is between sharing citation-free ideas and not having them shared at all.
Maybe we think an idea development process that involves bouncing ideas against others early on works better. Before looking up citations, maybe it’s best to check if the idea is worth testing, or if we should really be looking at a slightly different hypothesis. Maybe the idea will be shot down quickly and decisively by a commenter even if lots of citations are provided.
I think an important dimension here is what you’re being asked to provide evidence/citations for.
As an over-the-top example:
You didn’t provide a citation for this. So irrational. Much downvote.
Oh I agree, I was going off on a tangent with my thing (considering the specific scenario where everyone agrees that citations should be looked up at some point)
Posting or commenting imposes a cost in the form of a claim on the attention of your readers. It also provides a benefit in the form of information.
Perhaps the burden on writers should simply be to justify that their writing is relevant enough, and likely enough to be correct, to justify making this claim on readers’ time and attention. This burden should be higher on shared fora than personal blogs, higher on posts than comments, higher for parent comments than replies, higher for off-topic than on-topic posts, higher for speculation than for fact posts.
Russell’s teapot.
A reasonable prior is enough to defeat random hypotheses like that.
The question isn’t how heavy the burden of proof is. The question is who has that burden.
I think there should be a burden on the writer to make a coherent point, that is novel and either interesting or useful. That could include evidence for the central claims they are making, or just a logical argument using existing widely believed assumptions.
I don’t think that means having citations for every single claim, especially ones that are reasonable, common-sense claims. If a commenter wants to present strong evidence that commonsense claim X is false, that’s fine, but what I have seen (at least a few years ago) is someone merely pointing out that you don’t have evidence causing the writer to get downvoted and lose the benefits of being promoted or getting karma.