Upvoted for noticing your confusion. At least two possible reasons come to mind:
Explanation 1: Luke has made many solid contributions in the past, and such contributors’ comments tend to receive more upvotes than others’ do, just by a kind of halo effect: “Luke’s other posts are good, so he’s a good rationalist, so this comment of his must be good too.” I don’t know how true this is: I’ve heard the idea suggested by other people here, but I’ve also seen several examples of top contributors receiving well-deserved downvotes in some cases.
Explanation 2: Luke’s comment is genuinely more deserving of upvotes, since rysade’s comment uses phrases like “I think” and “subtly changing”, which downplay commitment and measurability, respectively, while Luke’s comment indicates an explicit change he has already made. Again, I can’t really speak for the people who upvoted Luke’s comment (not even being one of them myself), but it seems plausible that this is at least one force at work in the disparity.
I don’t know how much of each of these two hypotheses is truly at work here, or if there’s something else going on that I’ve missed. (It’s easy to come up with what are in my opinion less likely scenarios: Luke has made several phantom accounts to upvote his own comments and/or downvote others’ similar comments, or someone else holds a grudge against rysade, etc.)
Upvoted for noticing your confusion. At least two possible reasons come to mind:
Explanation 1: Luke has made many solid contributions in the past, and such contributors’ comments tend to receive more upvotes than others’ do, just by a kind of halo effect: “Luke’s other posts are good, so he’s a good rationalist, so this comment of his must be good too.” I don’t know how true this is: I’ve heard the idea suggested by other people here, but I’ve also seen several examples of top contributors receiving well-deserved downvotes in some cases.
Explanation 2: Luke’s comment is genuinely more deserving of upvotes, since rysade’s comment uses phrases like “I think” and “subtly changing”, which downplay commitment and measurability, respectively, while Luke’s comment indicates an explicit change he has already made. Again, I can’t really speak for the people who upvoted Luke’s comment (not even being one of them myself), but it seems plausible that this is at least one force at work in the disparity.
I don’t know how much of each of these two hypotheses is truly at work here, or if there’s something else going on that I’ve missed. (It’s easy to come up with what are in my opinion less likely scenarios: Luke has made several phantom accounts to upvote his own comments and/or downvote others’ similar comments, or someone else holds a grudge against rysade, etc.)