I did not downvote the “complaint list” comment until it had grown quite large.
I’m trying to understand your reasoning here, and failing. Do you downvote controversial things often? Are you upset with the quality of my comments, or with the quality of all of the comments that followed? Why does it make sense to downvote simply because one of my comments drew lots of attention and anger?
To me, this does not make sense. Please explicitly state your rationale.
What I meant was—I did not downvote the comment until it itself had grown quite large. To be blunt, my rationale was that at some point it crossed the line from “poorly-worded request for clarification” to “nutty rant”.
I think your characterization of your “complaint” comment is inaccurate
In what possible sense was the characterization inaccurate?
In what possible sense?! You called it “criticism of unwarranted negative feedback”. It could easily be argued that it didn’t read as “criticism” so much as “complaint”, it certainly wasn’t just “criticism”, and the term “unwarranted” basically assumes the conclusion, making yours a loaded question (“why did you give me an undeserved downvote?”).
However, your response was not useful to you for your expressed purpose of eliciting clarification on feedback.
If I ask for clarification repeatedly and do not receive clarification, that is not my fault.
If you have a goal, and your actions do not accomplish that goal, then saying that this is not your fault will also not accomplish that goal.
But, do you have a suggestion as to what might be better at eliciting clarification?
“Could someone who downvoted clarify why they thought my comment was not valuable?”
Or are you just trying to seem Reasonable?
Quit it! Even “rationalists” will be better disposed towards you if you make a basic attempt to interpret them charitably.
or to me
This is nonfalsifiable, and you’re getting something out of this conversation or else you’d leave.
I suspect that maybe you could be an interesting contributor here once this thread concludes. You haven’t claimed to have discovered the secret mathless Grand Unified Theory, for one thing.
or (apparently) the LW-emergent-consciousness for contributing to valuable discussion.
I don’t believe this is a relevant metric, my entire point is that their evaluation process is flawed.
Distinguish the former and the latter complaint! Are you saying that “contributes to valuable discussion” is a bad metric for LWers to use, or that LW is bad at judging what accomplishes that?
Of particular note is your unwarranted confidence that people who disagree with you are “irrational” and “dumb”. You did not have access to sufficient information to conclude this! In fact, if they were downvoting you because they expected your comment to lead to unproductive discussion, they were right.
I will change this believe if I see people change their behavior or give a good justification for giving my list comment −10 votes or if people answer the arguments which I have made in other places about the value of feedback about feedback. I have good reason to believe that LessWrong commenters are irrational because they are a subset of humans and knowing about biases does not make them go away. The fact that no justifications have been produced is also hugely relevant.
As to why your list comment is at −10, you’ve received a lot of justifications. Some in this very post. If you want justifications for the other comment’s downvotes, you may have to choose a different tack.
More to the point, have you considered that you may have erred in this thread?
Have you considered that no matter what answer I give to this question people will perceive the answer as though it is a “no”? Does this question have any purpose other than making the end of your post sound better? Are you actually thinking that my answer to this question will matter in some way?
My primary purpose was not rhetorical grandstanding or anything to do with your expected answer in this thread. I was hoping you would think hard about the decisions you’ve made in this thread and realize that some were in error, then decide to change them.
The answer is yes.
And, I’ve concluded that I was overconfident in my expectations that irrational individuals would concede their own irrationality within a community that values rationality. I should not have expected otherwise, there are stronger incentives within this community to avoid admitting defeat than there are in other communities because this community treats accuracy and objectivity as a sacred value.
However, I’ve also concluded that posting that question was still a good decision on an overall level because I still believe that individuals are perceiving the power of my arguments. Part of the reason that I perceive this is because of the scarcity of downvotes on the comments where I challenge commenters to provide me with evidence and those commenters fail. Another reason that I perceive this is because I have yet to see any objection to my list of comments which attacks it on its merits. A third reason is that I believe all of those arguments are objectively good. The final reason is that I have not seen any objections to my comments from any of the main posters on this site who strike me as extremely intelligent.
No! That’s not the kind of error I’m talking about. “I overestimated your intelligence” does not count. Do you really think that every single downvote and every single comment explaining your missteps was undeserved? Because if so, you should realize how unlikely that is, and reexamine the thread with that fact in mind.
What I meant was—I did not downvote the comment until it itself had grown quite large. To be blunt, my rationale was that at some point it crossed the line from “poorly-worded request for clarification” to “nutty rant”.
In what possible sense?! You called it “criticism of unwarranted negative feedback”. It could easily be argued that it didn’t read as “criticism” so much as “complaint”, it certainly wasn’t just “criticism”, and the term “unwarranted” basically assumes the conclusion, making yours a loaded question (“why did you give me an undeserved downvote?”).
If you have a goal, and your actions do not accomplish that goal, then saying that this is not your fault will also not accomplish that goal.
“Could someone who downvoted clarify why they thought my comment was not valuable?”
Quit it! Even “rationalists” will be better disposed towards you if you make a basic attempt to interpret them charitably.
I suspect that maybe you could be an interesting contributor here once this thread concludes. You haven’t claimed to have discovered the secret mathless Grand Unified Theory, for one thing.
Distinguish the former and the latter complaint! Are you saying that “contributes to valuable discussion” is a bad metric for LWers to use, or that LW is bad at judging what accomplishes that?
As to why your list comment is at −10, you’ve received a lot of justifications. Some in this very post. If you want justifications for the other comment’s downvotes, you may have to choose a different tack.
My primary purpose was not rhetorical grandstanding or anything to do with your expected answer in this thread. I was hoping you would think hard about the decisions you’ve made in this thread and realize that some were in error, then decide to change them.
No! That’s not the kind of error I’m talking about. “I overestimated your intelligence” does not count. Do you really think that every single downvote and every single comment explaining your missteps was undeserved? Because if so, you should realize how unlikely that is, and reexamine the thread with that fact in mind.