Right now his last-30-days figure is −131. But his votes are at 37% positive, not 0%. That means he’s actually on something like +187-318 in the last 30 days.
I wouldn’t say “getting ridiculous”, though. Eugine has been doing the same to me for months.
To say something somewhat controversial, while I disprove of Eugine’s mass downvoteing, it really isn’t that bad compared to the standard of discourse and dirty tactics used elsewhere. On reddit the site admins have allegedly been altering the votes and engaging in censorship; there has also been doxing and blackmail. Offline you could be fired, beaten up, or even, in extremis, killed for having the wrong political views, and I’m not just talking about people who live in a warzone or North Korea—the same thing does happen, albeit less frequently, in the US or UK.
I think Eugine thinks he is just trying to go tit for tat against the left. This isn’t a justification I agree with—I think LW should be held to a higher standard than reddit - but I can see how it would make sense from his point of view.
Some of Eugine’s mass-downvoting is obviously aimed at (what he considers) the pinko commie social justice warrior betas of LW. But there’s a more obvious explanation for his attacking Elo: Elo is a mod and keeps banning Eugine-sockpuppets, and is therefore The Enemy.
I think people are in charge of their own destiny; which is kinda capitalist-libertarian leaning. I know that not everyone is dealt the same hand in life, but I am not personally motivated to change that. I think success is hard but can be worked on.
I have strong pro- voluntary euthenasia choice views, and it’s the only thing I have ever been active about (which I am being active about now, but not on LW).
I am certainly not part of any clear and obvious party group that could be identified. On top of that I am not even in america, so trying to fight me on the internet is relatively irrelevant to an american.
(not sure if this answers your question/reason for asking—can you be more specific?)
Elo is a mod and keeps banning Eugine-sockpuppets, and is therefore The Enemy.
Other mods before my mod-time imposed a ban on Eugine for sock-puppet voting behaviour and then proceeded to let him post when he made new accounts/ the period of identifying a new Eugine takes time so his posts would stay up for weeks at a time. Also if you ban an account without deleting the posts then his mark stays. I stepped in and won’t let any of his posts stand more than a day because he is banned, he also has a habit of posting in identifiable ways, repeatedly—up to 10 times, trying to post literally the same thing. Him Posting is just him trying to break the ban. Which STILL STANDS FOR REASONS OF ONGOING SOCK PUPPET VOTING.
If he came back, didn’t sockpuppet, and picked a new alias—we probably wouldn’t know. But idiots with a vengence… It’s relatively easy to work out who he is when he posts, or sockpuppet downvotes. We are working on a reverse-downvote solution. I don’t have any interest in pressuring Dev volunteers so it will happen when it happens. Feel free to PM me if you want to join the development of a solution. I think python is the language it will be happening in.
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.
.
(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.
Sociopathy is basically absence of empathy. I’m not sure that mass downvoting (that is, manipulation of pretty meaningless numbers in a database about a web forum) qualifies as evidence pro.
Elo has 145 negative votes for the past month. This is getting ridiculous. What’s Eugine trying to prove?
It’s worse than that.
Right now his last-30-days figure is −131. But his votes are at 37% positive, not 0%. That means he’s actually on something like +187-318 in the last 30 days.
I wouldn’t say “getting ridiculous”, though. Eugine has been doing the same to me for months.
To say something somewhat controversial, while I disprove of Eugine’s mass downvoteing, it really isn’t that bad compared to the standard of discourse and dirty tactics used elsewhere. On reddit the site admins have allegedly been altering the votes and engaging in censorship; there has also been doxing and blackmail. Offline you could be fired, beaten up, or even, in extremis, killed for having the wrong political views, and I’m not just talking about people who live in a warzone or North Korea—the same thing does happen, albeit less frequently, in the US or UK.
I think Eugine thinks he is just trying to go tit for tat against the left. This isn’t a justification I agree with—I think LW should be held to a higher standard than reddit - but I can see how it would make sense from his point of view.
Some of Eugine’s mass-downvoting is obviously aimed at (what he considers) the pinko commie social justice warrior betas of LW. But there’s a more obvious explanation for his attacking Elo: Elo is a mod and keeps banning Eugine-sockpuppets, and is therefore The Enemy.
except I am not the left!
You might be when compared to Eugine.
What would you say your political views are?
I mostly don’t have any.
I think people are in charge of their own destiny; which is kinda capitalist-libertarian leaning. I know that not everyone is dealt the same hand in life, but I am not personally motivated to change that. I think success is hard but can be worked on.
I have strong pro- voluntary euthenasia choice views, and it’s the only thing I have ever been active about (which I am being active about now, but not on LW).
I am certainly not part of any clear and obvious party group that could be identified. On top of that I am not even in america, so trying to fight me on the internet is relatively irrelevant to an american.
(not sure if this answers your question/reason for asking—can you be more specific?)
Its a good enough answer, although I was wondering what you had said to annoy Eugine so much.
Of course, on some issues, libertarian positions agree with SJW positions, so maybe Eugine thinks you are more left-wing then you really are?
yep. What gjm said.
Other mods before my mod-time imposed a ban on Eugine for sock-puppet voting behaviour and then proceeded to let him post when he made new accounts/ the period of identifying a new Eugine takes time so his posts would stay up for weeks at a time. Also if you ban an account without deleting the posts then his mark stays. I stepped in and won’t let any of his posts stand more than a day because he is banned, he also has a habit of posting in identifiable ways, repeatedly—up to 10 times, trying to post literally the same thing. Him Posting is just him trying to break the ban. Which STILL STANDS FOR REASONS OF ONGOING SOCK PUPPET VOTING.
If he came back, didn’t sockpuppet, and picked a new alias—we probably wouldn’t know. But idiots with a vengence… It’s relatively easy to work out who he is when he posts, or sockpuppet downvotes. We are working on a reverse-downvote solution. I don’t have any interest in pressuring Dev volunteers so it will happen when it happens. Feel free to PM me if you want to join the development of a solution. I think python is the language it will be happening in.
I hadn’t noticed until now, but I haven’t seen any Eugine sockpuppets in a while, and it sounds like that’s due to you.
Thank you.
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.
He’s probably just crazy.
Not enough data to make a good guess, but sociopathy would be among my top hypotheses.
Sociopathy is basically absence of empathy. I’m not sure that mass downvoting (that is, manipulation of pretty meaningless numbers in a database about a web forum) qualifies as evidence pro.
Agreed, that’s pretty much why I think he’s crazy. He appears to have devoted an insane amount of effort to a fundamentally pointless activity.
No, if he downvoted all Elo’s posts to zero, then it would be a pointless activity.