I’d like an option to hide all karma scores. There’s two reasons for this:
I worry that by seeing the karma of a post before reading the post, I will be unfairly biased toward or against that post. I’d really like to make up my own mind about these things before seeing what the community has decided. I’m pretty sure my opinions change drasticallly based on the opinions of the group I’m in, and this seems counterproductive for rationality (although very useful for social cohesion).
I’m embarrassed to admit that karma scores affect my emotions a lot. Each time I lose a karma point, it’s like an emotional punch in the face. If someone politely disagreed with my post, I would not have this reaction. If someone violently disagreed with my post, I’d either be slightly upset, very amused, or both. But when I lose a karma point, I feel intense shame. Also, when I gain karma, I feel intense pride. When I post here, I feel like I’m talking to “win karma”, not to engage in an interesting discussion with thoughtful, intelligent people. This isn’t a motivation/reaction I like to have, and that’s why I almost never post here, and instead spend all my time on IRC. Basically, because of the karma system, I try not to say anything that might be disapproved of, and I’m reluctant to engage in candid discussion. Those of you who know me on IRC or IRL might be surprised to hear this, because in those situations I almost always discuss my thoughts/opinions candidly without fearing social rejection; in fact, in those situations, I genuinely don’t care whether I’m rejected. I don’t know why the karma system on LW is so different for me. Anyway, I’m going to try to train my emotional system to ignore karma altogether the way I’ve trained it not to care about IRL rejection; we’ll see how that goes.
But when I lose a karma point, I feel intense shame.
it might be worth it for you to explore why this happens, by trying to trace the hidden logic leading to this emotion. This might help in other, real-life situations when a similar emotion happens (whether they are related or not to the silent public disapproval with no recourse that downvoting is usually perceived as).
Trn (a comprehensive system for managing long discussions which was used on usenet and was never rewritten for the web). I’m expecting an age difference on this one, not a gender difference.
Up-down karma vote histories.
However, I’m fine with anonymous voting. I think we’d get even more conflict and less good voting if votes had names attached to them.
Built-in polling would be excellent, preferably with some way of handling whether people’s poll answers were correlated. I don’t know whether most polling systems have this—the only one I’ve used is livejournal, and it doesn’t.
Due to the widespread elitism or appearance of elitism, I am very concerned. People in the outside world aren’t going to make distinctions between a group of people who call themselves “elitists” for harmless reasons versus people who believe they’re “better than others” and are therefore entitled to special treatment or to make exceptions to the rules for themselves. It’s also a weird surprise because it’s in direct conflict with the site’s vision—to spread rationality. Spreading rationality necessarily means transmitting it to people who are not good at rational thought, because focusing on transmitting it to people who are already good at it does not qualify as “spreading” it.
Imagine going into a room full of strangers and announcing that you are an elitist. Does this strike no one else as socially inept? Yet here we are in public, and people are announcing to the world of strangers that we are elitists. I don’t like being smeared as an “elitist” by these people, I know the world will see me as guilty by association. The rest of the world isn’t known for being rational. If they see a group of people calling themselves “elitists” they won’t stop to make distinctions. They’ll just err on the side of caution by assuming you guys are a bunch of overbearing jerks. This is about as smart, in my view, as going back in time few hundred years and claiming to enjoy casting magic spells. It doesn’t matter if you’re referring to an RPG game, you just invited a witch hunt.
Maybe you guys figure anybody intelligent will agree with your attitude. No. It’s a perfectly constructive use of one’s intelligence to take measures to avoid committing social suicide. That this group allows itself to be associated with the term “elitism”—that nobody moderates those comments and that they’re being voted up to the sky—is a public relations disaster waiting to happen. At first, it didn’t even occur to me that the people here might not realize that. That’s such a no brainer to me, I assumed you didn’t care because you really do think you’re better than them, so you can afford to provoke the outside world and just ignore their ire. Now, I am considering that the people on this website may just be socially inept enough to do that and not realize how crazy it looks to non-elitist intellectuals like me.
As I’ve said before, maintaining quality does not require you to wear a scary word that is used to mean “overbearing jerk”. I think you guys need a no elitism policy which includes: A.) Not letting people behave in an abusive or insulting way toward people who may not have the same education or IQ. B.) Not smearing the organization by using the word “elitist” lightly to describe LessWrong. I don’t want to associate myself with an elitist or “elitist” organization. The only reason I haven’t quit already is because I still have a sense of possibility that you guys will eventually grok what an assassination you’re launching against your reputations and I think that the good things about this group and the vision you’re gathered around make it worth continuing to discuss the topic of elitism with you.
You’re over-reacting to one comment, which made its point well despite using a word you disapprove of. It’s not as though Less Wrong identifies itself to the world at large as elitist (although some people, and indeed some users here, may describe it that way).
Furthermore, a policy of “not using the word “elitist”″ is completely orthogonal to a policy of “not being abusive to lower IQ people”. What makes you think the latter is necessary?
(I accidentally misread Kindlys post, the response to his actual wording is in a comment below.)
Would you go into a room full of strangers and announce that you’re an elitist? Have you ever tried talking about this with everyday people? Talking about intellectual differences, giftedness, elitism, etc. often triggers a bad reaction, even if you try to do it carefully. This is socially inept to an extreme. When the masses don’t like something, they don’t stop to make distinctions about it. If you guys aren’t doing anything to prevent users from smearing the whole organization as “elitist” then all of you are going to be deemed guilty by association. There are people using their real names here—their IRL reputations may be effected by elitism or the appearance of elitism. Just as you shouldn’t abuse a person by slandering them, you shouldn’t abuse a group of people by smearing them all as elitists—unless they deserve that. That’s why it’s important—because people like me take offense to being labeled an “elitist”, knowing what resentment that can provoke in the average Joe, and I don’t appreciate being smeared this way with the rest of you.
Also, don’t misquote my wording. What I said was that people shouldn’t be let to smear LessWrong by using the word “elitism” lightly. That’s different from banning it from use. I’m essentially saying “don’t let them slander the group”. Of course, if you guys really do think you’re better than everyone else and that you should have special treatment and exceptions to rules, go ahead and use the word “elitist” to describe that, as it will give the rest of the world the right idea. I will definitely be leaving if that’s what the group decides, though, and you’ll be scaring off the other non elitist intellectuals and donations from anyone who isn’t an intellectual elitist.
Can you stop using the word “elitist”? You can go on mentioning it, since part of your claim seems to be about where that word should and should not appear, but please stop using it.
Ok, I see what you mean. I also see that asking me to quit using the words “elitist” and “elitism” is the equivalent of asking me to quit talking about the subject of elitism. I do not see why it would help any of us improve if I quit talking about elitism. Even if I’m the one that’s confused, I doubt I will realize it if I refrain from talking about it.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to misquote you. When I said “a policy of “not using the word “elitist”″” I meant it as shorthand for the second policy you suggested (the one under the letter B), not as a summary.
And I’m afraid you misunderstood my question. I didn’t mean to ask why “Not letting people behave in an abusive or insulting way toward people who may not have the same education or IQ” is a good idea—that’s pretty much obvious. What my question was, what makes you think this needs to be an explicit policy?
(By the way, I would appreciate it if you didn’t confuse my own point of view with the “Less Wrong point of view”. If such a thing even exists, I’m not a spokesperson for it.)
Oh I misread your post. Okay. Now I am baffled as to why you don’t seem to agree that it would be good to have a policy. Well here are a few reasons:
1.) If there’s no formal policy against elitism, and there are a bunch of people creating the appearance of elitism on the site, that looks bad. It looks much better if we have it in writing that the people who run the site don’t want elitism.
2.) It’s obvious to you and me that that’s a bad way to act, but it’s not obvious to everybody. If a bunch of people create the appearance of elitism on a website, might it be because they are elitists? That was what I thought at first… I didn’t think a group of people would be crazy enough to brand themselves as elitists unless they actually were elitists. I did think to question that perception, but it still seems like a valid question to ask whether the reason these people seem so willing to look like elitists might be a sign that they actually are.
3.) If a bunch of people create the appearance of elitism on a website, isn’t that likely to draw elitists? I would think so. And if people are getting away with creating the appearance of elitism, that may encourage elitists who are attracted to this site from acting in an abusive manner. Having a policy may prevent that or encourage moderators to do something about it after the fact.
There are two broad reasons why one might have such a policy.
First, if in fact it were a common tendency on Less Wrong to dismiss outsiders as inferior (based on education or IQ? I don’t think this is necessary for elitism, but you seem to be focused on these) then the policy might be a step to help prevent this. I don’t see such a tendency, and I think I’m more disgusted than average by people saying things like “If you have less than 130 IQ, you’re not worth talking to”. Do you have examples of people actually acting like this? Note that this is different from saying that people outside Less Wrong have lower standards for discussion.
Second, if Less Wrong appears to be “elitist”, an “anti-elitist” formal policy might counter this appearance. I believe this is what you’re suggesting. I don’t think this is a good idea. First of all, I don’t think it would work. For example, if I saw a forum’s policy explicitly state “No racist comments will be condoned” then I would actually think racism is more of a problem than average on that forum.
Furthermore, I read Less Wrong because people here prefer not to say one thing to mean another, which is exactly what this is suggesting. I expect users here to notice the difference between a policy that does something, and one that puts up an appearance of doing something. I don’t want a policy of the second kind.
1.) A comment including the term “intellectual riff-raff” (and some similar comments on the same thread that were not blatantly elitist but may or may not be interpreted that way).
2.) The intellectual riff-raff comment was never moderated even though I pointed it out to Luke.
5.) This post, Elitist Jerks: A Well-Kept Garden , is smearing the site as “elitist”, with “We’re (a site called elitistjerks.com) exactly the sort of ‘well-kept garden’ that EY’s post is about.”—and the post is popular.
You’re stretching the truth. All but the last example were reactions to discussions you started. If you start a discussion on a forum, you should expect some people to disagree with you.
And if you had actually read the Elitist Jerks article past the title, you would have realized that its purpose is to question whether an “elitist” style of moderation is a good idea on another website.
And if you had actually read the Elitist Jerks article past the title, you would have noticed this sentence:
“We’re (a site called elitistjerks.com) exactly the sort of ‘well-kept garden’ that EY’s post is about.”
Interpreting that to mean “LessWrong is a bunch of elitist jerks.” is likely to be a common interpretation.
Kindly, when it comes to how the outside world perceives LessWrong and members like myself who are (tentatively) choosing to associate myself with you guys (possibly not for long, because of this) it does not matter one rat’s behind how you interpret things like that. Those kinds of statements upset people.
I feel like you’re arguing with strawmen here, and it’s starting to get old.
Even if my interpretation is wrong, I’d bet that my interpretation was common, so we’ve lost sight of the point which was that this comment makes LessWrong look like elitists. Changes comment because the relevant thing is not whether that interpretation is valid, what’s relevant is whether it would be common.
I’d expect a site calling itself “Elitist Jerks” to be doing so at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, like most self-deprecation of that species. Inferring based on this that the site’s actually full of elitist jerks is questionable. Inferring based on that and a comparison of forum management styles that LW is likewise full of elitist jerks is very questionable.
I’m going to ignore the Elitist Jerks article if you don’t mind, because really the only association it has with the topic at hand is the name of a community in no way affiliated with Less Wrong, and moreover a casual visitor is unlikely to ever read it.
Besides that, you are mainly seeing reactions to your own posts related to elitism, and I think you’re misreading those reactions. In particular, other people don’t read comments on the “pro-or-anti-elitist” scale, and their upvotes and downvotes don’t reflect that. (See here for why I think your post was downvoted.)
Imagine going into a room full of strangers and announcing that you are an elitist. Does this strike no one else as socially inept?
Going into a room full of strangers and announcing I was a socialist, or an egalitarian, or a libertarian, or a conservative, etc. would be socially inept. In fact, announcing I was a human or a carbon-based lifeform or a biped would be socially inept too. It’s nothing special about elitism.
Is “elitism” perhaps a particularly bad word in the US but not other parts of the world? For example I’ve always found the accusation of US politicians being “elitist” as mildly confusing, like something that just wouldn’t happen in my countries political discourse.
I’m new to less wrong so my opinions may not be seen to count as much as more regular users. But anyway, I definitely think the voting should be anonymous in order to avoid petty conflicts.
I also think there may be some flaws in the voting system. While I think it is a good thing that long time users and regular contributors to less wrong as well as interesting and insightful comments are recognised and rewarded for their input with karma points I feel there may also be some downsides:
For example in some situations people may want to say something that conflicts with the opinion of the majority of users commenting on a thread but decide against it due to the prospect of being down voted (as well as comments). I noticed that in this thread alicorn said she had felt this way about commenting on threads about gender issues.
Also if someone decides to say something controversial anyway (compared to other attitudes on the thread) this may get down voted and become invisible. I think this is bad because it is preferable to have a variety of views represented on any thread or the discussion may suffer due to one sidedness. I have read before that people tend to seek out those who share their view point and ignore opposing opinions but i think it would be better to have a debate when such situations arise rather than completely sidelining views that we don’t agree with which is a danger with the down voting system. Of course it is a different case when a comment is unacceptable to the standards of the community by being obscene etc but that could be dealt with by the “report” function.
I don’t think the up/ down vote system should be abandoned but maybe some modifications could be made.
What software feature (or policy) would you like to see added to the LessWrong forums and up/down vote system?
(There may or may not be a gender difference in perceived value of proposed features. I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.)
I’d like an option to hide all karma scores. There’s two reasons for this:
I worry that by seeing the karma of a post before reading the post, I will be unfairly biased toward or against that post. I’d really like to make up my own mind about these things before seeing what the community has decided. I’m pretty sure my opinions change drasticallly based on the opinions of the group I’m in, and this seems counterproductive for rationality (although very useful for social cohesion).
I’m embarrassed to admit that karma scores affect my emotions a lot. Each time I lose a karma point, it’s like an emotional punch in the face. If someone politely disagreed with my post, I would not have this reaction. If someone violently disagreed with my post, I’d either be slightly upset, very amused, or both. But when I lose a karma point, I feel intense shame. Also, when I gain karma, I feel intense pride. When I post here, I feel like I’m talking to “win karma”, not to engage in an interesting discussion with thoughtful, intelligent people. This isn’t a motivation/reaction I like to have, and that’s why I almost never post here, and instead spend all my time on IRC. Basically, because of the karma system, I try not to say anything that might be disapproved of, and I’m reluctant to engage in candid discussion. Those of you who know me on IRC or IRL might be surprised to hear this, because in those situations I almost always discuss my thoughts/opinions candidly without fearing social rejection; in fact, in those situations, I genuinely don’t care whether I’m rejected. I don’t know why the karma system on LW is so different for me. Anyway, I’m going to try to train my emotional system to ignore karma altogether the way I’ve trained it not to care about IRL rejection; we’ll see how that goes.
There is a browser extension called the anti-kibitzer that will, among other things, hide karma scores on comments/posts.
=O Thanks muchly! I’m trying it out right now. It doesn’t seem to work properly, but perhaps I’m doing it wrong; I’ll play with it more.
it might be worth it for you to explore why this happens, by trying to trace the hidden logic leading to this emotion. This might help in other, real-life situations when a similar emotion happens (whether they are related or not to the silent public disapproval with no recourse that downvoting is usually perceived as).
For a quick fix to the own-karma problem, get the firefox Stylish extension and add this stylesheet:
If you add
.votesto that selector, then you also hide the points on comments and posts. I.e.Trn (a comprehensive system for managing long discussions which was used on usenet and was never rewritten for the web). I’m expecting an age difference on this one, not a gender difference.
Up-down karma vote histories.
However, I’m fine with anonymous voting. I think we’d get even more conflict and less good voting if votes had names attached to them.
Built-in polling would be excellent, preferably with some way of handling whether people’s poll answers were correlated. I don’t know whether most polling systems have this—the only one I’ve used is livejournal, and it doesn’t.
Oh Gods yes, I wish for Trn, or better still, Gnus.
I want more support for the public votes feature (I want it to work backwards and on comments). I’d also like built-in polling support.
I’d like a policy change:
Due to the widespread elitism or appearance of elitism, I am very concerned. People in the outside world aren’t going to make distinctions between a group of people who call themselves “elitists” for harmless reasons versus people who believe they’re “better than others” and are therefore entitled to special treatment or to make exceptions to the rules for themselves. It’s also a weird surprise because it’s in direct conflict with the site’s vision—to spread rationality. Spreading rationality necessarily means transmitting it to people who are not good at rational thought, because focusing on transmitting it to people who are already good at it does not qualify as “spreading” it.
Imagine going into a room full of strangers and announcing that you are an elitist. Does this strike no one else as socially inept? Yet here we are in public, and people are announcing to the world of strangers that we are elitists. I don’t like being smeared as an “elitist” by these people, I know the world will see me as guilty by association. The rest of the world isn’t known for being rational. If they see a group of people calling themselves “elitists” they won’t stop to make distinctions. They’ll just err on the side of caution by assuming you guys are a bunch of overbearing jerks. This is about as smart, in my view, as going back in time few hundred years and claiming to enjoy casting magic spells. It doesn’t matter if you’re referring to an RPG game, you just invited a witch hunt.
Maybe you guys figure anybody intelligent will agree with your attitude. No. It’s a perfectly constructive use of one’s intelligence to take measures to avoid committing social suicide. That this group allows itself to be associated with the term “elitism”—that nobody moderates those comments and that they’re being voted up to the sky—is a public relations disaster waiting to happen. At first, it didn’t even occur to me that the people here might not realize that. That’s such a no brainer to me, I assumed you didn’t care because you really do think you’re better than them, so you can afford to provoke the outside world and just ignore their ire. Now, I am considering that the people on this website may just be socially inept enough to do that and not realize how crazy it looks to non-elitist intellectuals like me.
As I’ve said before, maintaining quality does not require you to wear a scary word that is used to mean “overbearing jerk”. I think you guys need a no elitism policy which includes: A.) Not letting people behave in an abusive or insulting way toward people who may not have the same education or IQ. B.) Not smearing the organization by using the word “elitist” lightly to describe LessWrong. I don’t want to associate myself with an elitist or “elitist” organization. The only reason I haven’t quit already is because I still have a sense of possibility that you guys will eventually grok what an assassination you’re launching against your reputations and I think that the good things about this group and the vision you’re gathered around make it worth continuing to discuss the topic of elitism with you.
You’re over-reacting to one comment, which made its point well despite using a word you disapprove of. It’s not as though Less Wrong identifies itself to the world at large as elitist (although some people, and indeed some users here, may describe it that way).
Furthermore, a policy of “not using the word “elitist”″ is completely orthogonal to a policy of “not being abusive to lower IQ people”. What makes you think the latter is necessary?
(I accidentally misread Kindlys post, the response to his actual wording is in a comment below.)
Would you go into a room full of strangers and announce that you’re an elitist? Have you ever tried talking about this with everyday people? Talking about intellectual differences, giftedness, elitism, etc. often triggers a bad reaction, even if you try to do it carefully. This is socially inept to an extreme. When the masses don’t like something, they don’t stop to make distinctions about it. If you guys aren’t doing anything to prevent users from smearing the whole organization as “elitist” then all of you are going to be deemed guilty by association. There are people using their real names here—their IRL reputations may be effected by elitism or the appearance of elitism. Just as you shouldn’t abuse a person by slandering them, you shouldn’t abuse a group of people by smearing them all as elitists—unless they deserve that. That’s why it’s important—because people like me take offense to being labeled an “elitist”, knowing what resentment that can provoke in the average Joe, and I don’t appreciate being smeared this way with the rest of you.
Also, don’t misquote my wording. What I said was that people shouldn’t be let to smear LessWrong by using the word “elitism” lightly. That’s different from banning it from use. I’m essentially saying “don’t let them slander the group”. Of course, if you guys really do think you’re better than everyone else and that you should have special treatment and exceptions to rules, go ahead and use the word “elitist” to describe that, as it will give the rest of the world the right idea. I will definitely be leaving if that’s what the group decides, though, and you’ll be scaring off the other non elitist intellectuals and donations from anyone who isn’t an intellectual elitist.
Can you stop using the word “elitist”? You can go on mentioning it, since part of your claim seems to be about where that word should and should not appear, but please stop using it.
I’m not sure what you’re asking.
Use-mention distinction. Please stop using the word “elitism”.
Ok, I see what you mean. I also see that asking me to quit using the words “elitist” and “elitism” is the equivalent of asking me to quit talking about the subject of elitism. I do not see why it would help any of us improve if I quit talking about elitism. Even if I’m the one that’s confused, I doubt I will realize it if I refrain from talking about it.
You can play Rationalist Taboo, yes?
I decided to take your suggestion, thanks.
Actually, I think Alicorn is asking you to unpack what you mean by elitism, or else we are in danger of arguing about trees falling in a forest.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to misquote you. When I said “a policy of “not using the word “elitist”″” I meant it as shorthand for the second policy you suggested (the one under the letter B), not as a summary.
And I’m afraid you misunderstood my question. I didn’t mean to ask why “Not letting people behave in an abusive or insulting way toward people who may not have the same education or IQ” is a good idea—that’s pretty much obvious. What my question was, what makes you think this needs to be an explicit policy?
(By the way, I would appreciate it if you didn’t confuse my own point of view with the “Less Wrong point of view”. If such a thing even exists, I’m not a spokesperson for it.)
Oh I misread your post. Okay. Now I am baffled as to why you don’t seem to agree that it would be good to have a policy. Well here are a few reasons:
1.) If there’s no formal policy against elitism, and there are a bunch of people creating the appearance of elitism on the site, that looks bad. It looks much better if we have it in writing that the people who run the site don’t want elitism.
2.) It’s obvious to you and me that that’s a bad way to act, but it’s not obvious to everybody. If a bunch of people create the appearance of elitism on a website, might it be because they are elitists? That was what I thought at first… I didn’t think a group of people would be crazy enough to brand themselves as elitists unless they actually were elitists. I did think to question that perception, but it still seems like a valid question to ask whether the reason these people seem so willing to look like elitists might be a sign that they actually are.
3.) If a bunch of people create the appearance of elitism on a website, isn’t that likely to draw elitists? I would think so. And if people are getting away with creating the appearance of elitism, that may encourage elitists who are attracted to this site from acting in an abusive manner. Having a policy may prevent that or encourage moderators to do something about it after the fact.
Sorry if the misinterpretation annoyed you.
There are two broad reasons why one might have such a policy.
First, if in fact it were a common tendency on Less Wrong to dismiss outsiders as inferior (based on education or IQ? I don’t think this is necessary for elitism, but you seem to be focused on these) then the policy might be a step to help prevent this. I don’t see such a tendency, and I think I’m more disgusted than average by people saying things like “If you have less than 130 IQ, you’re not worth talking to”. Do you have examples of people actually acting like this? Note that this is different from saying that people outside Less Wrong have lower standards for discussion.
Second, if Less Wrong appears to be “elitist”, an “anti-elitist” formal policy might counter this appearance. I believe this is what you’re suggesting. I don’t think this is a good idea. First of all, I don’t think it would work. For example, if I saw a forum’s policy explicitly state “No racist comments will be condoned” then I would actually think racism is more of a problem than average on that forum.
Furthermore, I read Less Wrong because people here prefer not to say one thing to mean another, which is exactly what this is suggesting. I expect users here to notice the difference between a policy that does something, and one that puts up an appearance of doing something. I don’t want a policy of the second kind.
You’re unaware of what all I’m reacting to:
1.) A comment including the term “intellectual riff-raff” (and some similar comments on the same thread that were not blatantly elitist but may or may not be interpreted that way).
2.) The intellectual riff-raff comment was never moderated even though I pointed it out to Luke.
3.) A comment saying “LessWrong is elitist:” … “I wish LessWrong was more elitist!” got 20 upvotes. Note: That’s 21 people expressing this perspective, not one.
4.) My post Elitism isn’t necessary for refining rationality. was voted down so hard that Michael Porter said it was one of the most unpopular posts in LessWrong discussion.
5.) This post, Elitist Jerks: A Well-Kept Garden , is smearing the site as “elitist”, with “We’re (a site called elitistjerks.com) exactly the sort of ‘well-kept garden’ that EY’s post is about.”—and the post is popular.
You’re stretching the truth. All but the last example were reactions to discussions you started. If you start a discussion on a forum, you should expect some people to disagree with you.
And if you had actually read the Elitist Jerks article past the title, you would have realized that its purpose is to question whether an “elitist” style of moderation is a good idea on another website.
And you’re missing my point. That looks bad. It doesn’t matter how you interpret it, Kindly, when people say something like “LessWrong is elitist:” … “I wish LessWrong was more elitist!” and it gets 20 upvotes, that looks really bad.
And if you had actually read the Elitist Jerks article past the title, you would have noticed this sentence:
“We’re (a site called elitistjerks.com) exactly the sort of ‘well-kept garden’ that EY’s post is about.”
Interpreting that to mean “LessWrong is a bunch of elitist jerks.” is likely to be a common interpretation.
Kindly, when it comes to how the outside world perceives LessWrong and members like myself who are (tentatively) choosing to associate myself with you guys (possibly not for long, because of this) it does not matter one rat’s behind how you interpret things like that. Those kinds of statements upset people.
I feel like you’re arguing with strawmen here, and it’s starting to get old.
No. No it is not.
Even if my interpretation is wrong, I’d bet that my interpretation was common, so we’ve lost sight of the point which was that this comment makes LessWrong look like elitists. Changes comment because the relevant thing is not whether that interpretation is valid, what’s relevant is whether it would be common.
I’d expect a site calling itself “Elitist Jerks” to be doing so at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, like most self-deprecation of that species. Inferring based on this that the site’s actually full of elitist jerks is questionable. Inferring based on that and a comparison of forum management styles that LW is likewise full of elitist jerks is very questionable.
I’m going to ignore the Elitist Jerks article if you don’t mind, because really the only association it has with the topic at hand is the name of a community in no way affiliated with Less Wrong, and moreover a casual visitor is unlikely to ever read it.
Besides that, you are mainly seeing reactions to your own posts related to elitism, and I think you’re misreading those reactions. In particular, other people don’t read comments on the “pro-or-anti-elitist” scale, and their upvotes and downvotes don’t reflect that. (See here for why I think your post was downvoted.)
Going into a room full of strangers and announcing I was a socialist, or an egalitarian, or a libertarian, or a conservative, etc. would be socially inept. In fact, announcing I was a human or a carbon-based lifeform or a biped would be socially inept too. It’s nothing special about elitism.
Ok, and if a libertarian is what you are, you might as well be yourself, right? If you’re NOT an elitist, though, why trash yourself?
Is “elitism” perhaps a particularly bad word in the US but not other parts of the world? For example I’ve always found the accusation of US politicians being “elitist” as mildly confusing, like something that just wouldn’t happen in my countries political discourse.
I’m new to less wrong so my opinions may not be seen to count as much as more regular users. But anyway, I definitely think the voting should be anonymous in order to avoid petty conflicts. I also think there may be some flaws in the voting system. While I think it is a good thing that long time users and regular contributors to less wrong as well as interesting and insightful comments are recognised and rewarded for their input with karma points I feel there may also be some downsides: For example in some situations people may want to say something that conflicts with the opinion of the majority of users commenting on a thread but decide against it due to the prospect of being down voted (as well as comments). I noticed that in this thread alicorn said she had felt this way about commenting on threads about gender issues. Also if someone decides to say something controversial anyway (compared to other attitudes on the thread) this may get down voted and become invisible. I think this is bad because it is preferable to have a variety of views represented on any thread or the discussion may suffer due to one sidedness. I have read before that people tend to seek out those who share their view point and ignore opposing opinions but i think it would be better to have a debate when such situations arise rather than completely sidelining views that we don’t agree with which is a danger with the down voting system. Of course it is a different case when a comment is unacceptable to the standards of the community by being obscene etc but that could be dealt with by the “report” function. I don’t think the up/ down vote system should be abandoned but maybe some modifications could be made.