The principle is sound, but what about the time cost? I downvote maybe two or three comments a day, more if it’s a particularly bad day. I’m not prepared to write an essay explaining exactly was wrong with each of them, especially if the original commenter wasn’t prepared to take three seconds to write a halfway decent response.
Also, we are not immune to status effects. If I wanted to downvote one of Eliezer’s comments, I would feel really awkward having to explain to him why I was doing so and why I thought he wasn’t contributing productively to the conversation. But I’d do it to some random newbie without a second thought. It’s probably a bad idea to implement policies that allow higher status people to gain even more karma even more quickly.
By the way, has anyone else made a link between this community’s unhealthy obsession with karma and prediction markets? I recently read some articles claiming that prediction markets with fake money did just as well as ones with real money, in contrast to what most economists predicted. The economists’ argument was “Who the heck cares about fake money when it’s a meaningless status symbol?” And meanwhile, here we are, having long debates about possible unfair karma allocation systems...
By the way, has anyone else made a link between this community’s unhealthy obsession with karma and prediction markets?
This sentence made me think of something completely different—both illustrate the attraction of pure meta means of truth-seeking, of being able to outperform messy object-level reasoning without having to do any of it—the “algorithmism” that Mencius Moldbug accuses Bayesianism of. Not that karma and prediction markets aren’t good ideas, of course.
I’m not prepared to write an essay explaining exactly was wrong with each of them, especially if the original commenter wasn’t prepared to take three seconds to write a halfway decent response.
I’ve been downvoted for no apparent reason at least twice since I registered. In both of these cases my comments were on-topic, grammatical, and contained entirely reasonable content. In such cases I think an explanation is clearly warranted.
Honestly, I don’t like this whole system of voting and karma. I have social anxiety and it frankly hurts my feelings to be downvoted (more so than it lifts my spirits to be upvoted). Does this mean I shouldn’t participate in a forum about rationality? I would like to think otherwise. I liked OB just fine (though even there, I tended to keep my comments few and far between for fear of perceived social consequences).
(Yes, I know it’s ironic that just a little while ago I publicly downvoted a top-level post. But I did provide an explanation. And this was after I’d seen the author diss modern music before without saying anything. And then somebody downvoted my comment. Revenge?)
What we actually need around these parts is more voting. Then the occasional downvotes for stupid reasons will wash out faster. Meanwhile, don’t sweat it.
“Then the occasional downvotes for stupid reasons will wash out faster.”
The frequent downvotes for stupid reasons, however, will accumulate much more rapidly.
Quality control is important. You can’t make things better just by doing stuff faster than before, more than before, not least because there are usually quality tradeoffs with speed and quantity.
Meh. You said yourself that someone behaving irrationally has unpredictable behavior. So downvotes for stupid reasons are just noise, and should in large numbers be countered by either upvotes for stupid reasons, or other comments’ downvotes for stupid reasons. If there is still a considerable amount of voting for good reasons, it should usually show through the noise.
This analysis obviously assumes that there isn’t a systemic bias in the mix, like “always upvote Eliezer” or “always downvote Marshall”.
You’re right—re-reading, I meant to say “people behaving irrationally have collectively unpredictable behavior”, to which I assumed you would agree. I was extrapolating that from here:
Irrational thought patterns can be nearly anything, so there’s no way to specify an argument that will convince everyone.
I had also argued in the past that one could construct arguments that would convince most people since they’re probably irrational in predictable ways, and you disagreed.
I agree with komponisto somewhat, even though I’m a newbie around here. I think the danger of this putatively ‘democratically constructed’ body of discourse sliding off the precipice into becoming a mutual admiration society or worse are sufficient that there needs to be some discipline applied to dismissive actions. Therefore, some form of reporting on why one has been ‘disappeared’ might be in order.
In the case of being downvoted out of existence, an automatic message stating this could be sent to one’s profile (attached to the draft) with minimal effort surely. Where a comment or reply has been specifically removed by an admin, surely it’s common courtesy to say so, and maybe even offer a reason and by implication the right of reply where a misunderstanding has occured (yes, it happens!).
(embarrassment) I admit that was me. I was kind of annoyed you were downvoting a whole top-level post you admitted was pretty interesting because the writer expressed a musical preference you didn’t agree with. And then you made a whole comment about how you were doing that. It just seemed needlessly confrontational. And I thought if I wrote a response saying that, I’d just be dragging the whole topic further from Phil’s reasonable point about utilitarianism, and onto a debate about modern music that I honestly know nothing about. I just cancelled the vote, since it seems there’s too much disagreement about what downvotes mean for me to go around enforcing my thoughts about it anyway. Sorry for any trouble that might have caused.
But yes, I’m starting to agree that this whole system is getting aggravating.
For comparison, I downvote maybe 30 or more comments some days. I’m very negative. Some things just litter the comment threads. So I do have a personal interest in not requiring explanations to downvote.
(I feel a little guilty, because I’ve been up-voting practically every at-least-mediocre top-level post. My first top-level post got upvoted and that gave me the courage to write more of them. At this early point in the site it’s more important to encourage good writers to participate than to crack down on posts that aren’t perfect.)
The principle is sound, but what about the time cost? I downvote maybe two or three comments a day, more if it’s a particularly bad day. I’m not prepared to write an essay explaining exactly was wrong with each of them, especially if the original commenter wasn’t prepared to take three seconds to write a halfway decent response.
Also, we are not immune to status effects. If I wanted to downvote one of Eliezer’s comments, I would feel really awkward having to explain to him why I was doing so and why I thought he wasn’t contributing productively to the conversation. But I’d do it to some random newbie without a second thought. It’s probably a bad idea to implement policies that allow higher status people to gain even more karma even more quickly.
By the way, has anyone else made a link between this community’s unhealthy obsession with karma and prediction markets? I recently read some articles claiming that prediction markets with fake money did just as well as ones with real money, in contrast to what most economists predicted. The economists’ argument was “Who the heck cares about fake money when it’s a meaningless status symbol?” And meanwhile, here we are, having long debates about possible unfair karma allocation systems...
This sentence made me think of something completely different—both illustrate the attraction of pure meta means of truth-seeking, of being able to outperform messy object-level reasoning without having to do any of it—the “algorithmism” that Mencius Moldbug accuses Bayesianism of. Not that karma and prediction markets aren’t good ideas, of course.
Nick, thanks for the link—there are some interesting comments there.
I’ve been downvoted for no apparent reason at least twice since I registered. In both of these cases my comments were on-topic, grammatical, and contained entirely reasonable content. In such cases I think an explanation is clearly warranted.
Honestly, I don’t like this whole system of voting and karma. I have social anxiety and it frankly hurts my feelings to be downvoted (more so than it lifts my spirits to be upvoted). Does this mean I shouldn’t participate in a forum about rationality? I would like to think otherwise. I liked OB just fine (though even there, I tended to keep my comments few and far between for fear of perceived social consequences).
(Yes, I know it’s ironic that just a little while ago I publicly downvoted a top-level post. But I did provide an explanation. And this was after I’d seen the author diss modern music before without saying anything. And then somebody downvoted my comment. Revenge?)
What we actually need around these parts is more voting. Then the occasional downvotes for stupid reasons will wash out faster. Meanwhile, don’t sweat it.
“Then the occasional downvotes for stupid reasons will wash out faster.”
The frequent downvotes for stupid reasons, however, will accumulate much more rapidly.
Quality control is important. You can’t make things better just by doing stuff faster than before, more than before, not least because there are usually quality tradeoffs with speed and quantity.
Meh. You said yourself that someone behaving irrationally has unpredictable behavior. So downvotes for stupid reasons are just noise, and should in large numbers be countered by either upvotes for stupid reasons, or other comments’ downvotes for stupid reasons. If there is still a considerable amount of voting for good reasons, it should usually show through the noise.
This analysis obviously assumes that there isn’t a systemic bias in the mix, like “always upvote Eliezer” or “always downvote Marshall”.
“You said yourself that someone behaving irrationally has unpredictable behavior.”
No, I didn’t. Someone can be irrational, yet completely predictable and consistent. Go back and re-read what I said—you haven’t understood it.
“This analysis obviously assumes that there isn’t a systemic bias in the mix”
We’re dealing with human beings. There are ALWAYS systemic biases involved.
You’re right—re-reading, I meant to say “people behaving irrationally have collectively unpredictable behavior”, to which I assumed you would agree. I was extrapolating that from here:
I had also argued in the past that one could construct arguments that would convince most people since they’re probably irrational in predictable ways, and you disagreed.
I agree with komponisto somewhat, even though I’m a newbie around here. I think the danger of this putatively ‘democratically constructed’ body of discourse sliding off the precipice into becoming a mutual admiration society or worse are sufficient that there needs to be some discipline applied to dismissive actions. Therefore, some form of reporting on why one has been ‘disappeared’ might be in order. In the case of being downvoted out of existence, an automatic message stating this could be sent to one’s profile (attached to the draft) with minimal effort surely. Where a comment or reply has been specifically removed by an admin, surely it’s common courtesy to say so, and maybe even offer a reason and by implication the right of reply where a misunderstanding has occured (yes, it happens!).
(embarrassment) I admit that was me. I was kind of annoyed you were downvoting a whole top-level post you admitted was pretty interesting because the writer expressed a musical preference you didn’t agree with. And then you made a whole comment about how you were doing that. It just seemed needlessly confrontational. And I thought if I wrote a response saying that, I’d just be dragging the whole topic further from Phil’s reasonable point about utilitarianism, and onto a debate about modern music that I honestly know nothing about. I just cancelled the vote, since it seems there’s too much disagreement about what downvotes mean for me to go around enforcing my thoughts about it anyway. Sorry for any trouble that might have caused.
But yes, I’m starting to agree that this whole system is getting aggravating.
For comparison, I downvote maybe 30 or more comments some days. I’m very negative. Some things just litter the comment threads. So I do have a personal interest in not requiring explanations to downvote.
Thank you for performing this valuable service.
Yes, you’re much more negative than I.
(I feel a little guilty, because I’ve been up-voting practically every at-least-mediocre top-level post. My first top-level post got upvoted and that gave me the courage to write more of them. At this early point in the site it’s more important to encourage good writers to participate than to crack down on posts that aren’t perfect.)