I have no idea, but I think it has more to do with his personal rage than anything strategic, because I don’t see what exactly can you achieve by such a blatantly obvious behaviour.
what exactly can you achieve by such a blatantly obvious behaviour
If I remember correctly, discouragement of “wrongthinkers” is Eugine’s explicit goal.
One possible outcome is discouragement of Elo (and other users who get downvoted regularly). Other possible outcome is discouragement of people who would like to express opinions different from Eugine, but don’t want to get involved in the ongoing karma manipulation, so they either avoid the topic, or leave the website. Both outcomes seem compatible with what Eugine wants.
In the spirit of “trivial inconveniences”, making people annoyed—even by something pointless—can cause significant differences in their behavior. The changes on LW are mostly not about what people, but what people avoid doing.
Eugine failed to make LW a recruitment ground for his cult, but he can at least enjoy watching it burn.
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(Disclaimer: I actually didn’t like the few recent Elo’s articles. But that’s of course different from going and downvoting every single comment he made.)
This is a criticism I often think whenever there is crude censorship or other similar tactics. I would imagine a lot of political activism is entirely counter productive—humans are not often strategic.
I would imagine a lot of political activism is entirely counter productive
I think that people usually take the way that allows them to display their personal “virtue” (i.e. loyalty to the cause) rather than the one that optimizes for what the group is trying to achieve. Which is why movements that originally tried to achieve something meaningful gradually mutate into their own strawpersons.
For example, you can start with “people should be treated equally, even if they are X”, but soon you realize that saying positive things about X and negative things about non-X is what gets you perceived as a true believer—and pointing out exceptions gets you labeled as a heretic, -- so the movement gradually changes into de facto X-supremacism.
Or you can realize that trying to be politically correct at all costs sometimes makes people say stupid things, so you start signalling your intelligence by saying politically incorrect things… and continue doing so even in situations where saying the politically incorrect things makes youstupid.
I guess most people are not aware of participating in this process; they simply do more of what is socially rewarded in their group, and less of what is socially punished, without realizing they are being pushed somewhere they originally didn’t aim to be.
I have no idea, but I think it has more to do with his personal rage than anything strategic, because I don’t see what exactly can you achieve by such a blatantly obvious behaviour.
If I remember correctly, discouragement of “wrongthinkers” is Eugine’s explicit goal.
One possible outcome is discouragement of Elo (and other users who get downvoted regularly). Other possible outcome is discouragement of people who would like to express opinions different from Eugine, but don’t want to get involved in the ongoing karma manipulation, so they either avoid the topic, or leave the website. Both outcomes seem compatible with what Eugine wants.
In the spirit of “trivial inconveniences”, making people annoyed—even by something pointless—can cause significant differences in their behavior. The changes on LW are mostly not about what people, but what people avoid doing.
Eugine failed to make LW a recruitment ground for his cult, but he can at least enjoy watching it burn.
.
(Disclaimer: I actually didn’t like the few recent Elo’s articles. But that’s of course different from going and downvoting every single comment he made.)
This is a criticism I often think whenever there is crude censorship or other similar tactics. I would imagine a lot of political activism is entirely counter productive—humans are not often strategic.
I think that people usually take the way that allows them to display their personal “virtue” (i.e. loyalty to the cause) rather than the one that optimizes for what the group is trying to achieve. Which is why movements that originally tried to achieve something meaningful gradually mutate into their own strawpersons.
For example, you can start with “people should be treated equally, even if they are X”, but soon you realize that saying positive things about X and negative things about non-X is what gets you perceived as a true believer—and pointing out exceptions gets you labeled as a heretic, -- so the movement gradually changes into de facto X-supremacism.
Or you can realize that trying to be politically correct at all costs sometimes makes people say stupid things, so you start signalling your intelligence by saying politically incorrect things… and continue doing so even in situations where saying the politically incorrect things makes you stupid.
I guess most people are not aware of participating in this process; they simply do more of what is socially rewarded in their group, and less of what is socially punished, without realizing they are being pushed somewhere they originally didn’t aim to be.