It is good to discourage people from spending a lot of effort on making things that have little or no (or even negative) value.
Would you care to distinguish a means of discouraging people from spending effort on low-value things, from a means that simply discourages people from spending effort in general? It seems to me that here you are taking the concept of “making things that have little or no (or even negative) value” as a primitive action—something that can be “encouraged” or “discouraged”—whereas, on the other hand, it seems to me that the true primitive action here is spending effort in the first place, and that actions taken to disincentivize the former, will in fact turn out to disincentivize the latter.
If this is in fact the case, then the question is not so simple as whether we ought to discourage posters from spending effort on making incorrect posts (to which the answer would of course be “yes, we ought”), but rather, whether we ought to discourage posters from spending effort. To this, you say:
But there is no virtue in mere effort.
Perhaps there is no “virtue” in effort, but in that case we must ask why “virtue” is the thing we are measuring. If the goal is to maximize, not “virtue”, but high-quality posts, then I submit that (all else being equal) having more high-effort posts is more likely to accomplish this than having fewer high-effort posts. Unless your contention is that all else is not equal (perhaps high-effort posts are more likely to contain muddled thinking, and hence more likely to have incorrect conclusions? but it’s hard to see why this should be the case a priori), then it seems to me that encouraging posters to put large amounts of effort into their posts is simply a better course of action than discouraging them.
And what does it mean to “encourage” or “discourage” a poster? Based on the following part of your comment, it seems that you are taking “discourage” to mean something along the lines of “point out ways in which the post in question is mistaken”:
If I post a long, in-depth analysis, which is lovingly illustrated, meticulously referenced, and wrong, and you respond with a one-line comment that points out the way in which my post was wrong, then I have done poorly (and my post ought to be downvoted), while you have done well (and your comment ought to be upvoted).
But how often is it the case that a “long, in-depth analysis, which is lovingly illustrated [and] meticulously referenced” is, not only wrong, but so obviously wrong that the mistake can be pointed out via a simple one-liner? I claim that this so rarely occurs that it should play a negligible role in our considerations—in other words, that the hypothetical situation you describe does not reflect reality.
What occurs more often, I think, is that a commenter finds themselves mistakenly under the impression that they have spotted an obvious error, and then proceeds to post (what they believe to be) an obvious refutation. I further claim that such cases are disproportionately responsible for the so-called “drive-by low-effort criticism” described in the OP. It may be that you disagree with this, but whether it is true or not is in a matter of factual accuracy, not opinion. However, if one happens to believe it is true, then it should not be difficult to understand why one might prefer to see less of the described behavior.
perhaps high-effort posts are more likely to contain muddled thinking, and hence more likely to have incorrect conclusions? but it’s hard to see why this should be the case a priori
I don’t think high-effort posts are more likely to contain muddled thinking, but I do think readers are less likely to notice muddled thinking when it appears in high-effort posts, so suppressing criticism of high-effort posts is especially dangerous.
Would you care to distinguish a means of discouraging people from spending effort on low-value things, from a means that simply discourages people from spending effort in general?
Sure, that’s easy: apply the discouragement (downvotes, critical comments, etc.) only to low-value things, and not to high-value things.
Or are you suggesting that you (or, perhaps, Less Wrong participants in general?) can’t tell the difference between low-value things and high-value things?
Perhaps there is no “virtue” in effort, but in this case we must ask why “virtue” is the thing we are measuring.
“Virtue” here means “whatever we take to be good and desirable, and that which produces those things”. We are measuring it because it is, by definition, the thing we want to be measuring.
If the goal is to maximize, not “virtue”, but high-quality posts, then I submit that (all else being equal) having more high-effort posts is more likely to accomplish this than having fewer high-quality posts.
[emphasis mine]
Did you mean to write “high-effort”, in place of the bolded part? (If, however, you meant what you wrote, then I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, here; please explain.)
And what does it mean to “encourage” or “discourage” a poster?
I mean whatever the OP means when he talks about adverse effects, etc.
But how often is it the case that a “long, in-depth analysis, which is lovingly illustrated [and] meticulously referenced” is, not only wrong, but so obviously wrong that the mistake can be pointed out via a simple one-liner?
What occurs more often, I think, is that a commenter finds themselves mistakenly under the impression that they have spotted an obvious error, and they act quickly to post what they believe to be an obvious refutation. I further claim that such cases are disproportionately responsible for the so-called “drive-by low-effort criticism” described in the OP. If this claim is true, then it should not be difficult to understand why some people might prefer to see less of this.
Yes, we should discourage low-quality criticism which is wrong, and encourage high-quality criticism which is right. (I already said this, in the grandparent.) Having accounted for this, it makes no sense at all to prefer longer critical comments to shorter ones. (Quite the opposite preference would be sensible, in fact.)
Yes, we should discourage low-quality criticism which is wrong, and encourage high-quality criticism which is right. (I already said this, in the grandparent.) Having accounted for this, it makes no sense at all to prefer longer critical comments to shorter ones. (Quite the opposite preference would be sensible, in fact.)
I think that compared to high-effort criticisms, low-effort criticisms are much more likely to be based on misunderstandings or otherwise low quality. I interpret Lionhearted as saying that criticism should, on the margin, be held to a higher bar than it is now.
What is the evaluation of “effort” even doing here? Why not just evaluate whether the criticism is high-quality, understands the post, is correct, etc?
Requiring “effort” (independent of quality) is a proof-of-work scheme meant to tax criticism.
Requiring “effort” (independent of quality) is a proof-of-work scheme meant to tax criticism.
Proof-of-work was originally invented to fight email spam. The analogous argument plausibly applies here: evaluating quality (e.g., letting a human read the email to decide what to do with it, trying to figure out whether a criticism actually makes sense) is costly, so it’s more efficient to first filter using a cheaper-to-evaluate signal/proxy like work/effort. (I don’t think this is the OP’s argument though, which is based more on low effort criticism feeling unpleasant or discouraging to some post authors. I’m kind of going off on a tangent based on your mention of “proof of work”.)
Now, at first glance this may seem orthogonal to what you said—which was about how much effort went into the criticism, rather than how much went into the post—but note that evaluation of a criticism as “low-effort” is relative. If I write a very well-researched and lengthy post, and you write the median comment (in effort, length, etc.) in reply, that is “low-effort” relative to the post I wrote, yes?
This implies that criticism which is low-effort relative to the post it is responding to, should not only not be held to a higher bar, but in fact that it should be held to a lower bar!
That having been said, it is of course good to discourage bad criticism. But the point is that “how much effort went into this” is simply orthogonal to quality—and this is true for posts as well as comments.
So, we should discourage bad posts, and encourage good ones. We should discourage bad criticism, and encourage good criticism.
We should not, however, encourage high-effort posts merely for being high-effort, nor should we discourage low-effort criticism merely for being low-effort. What matters is results.
And note that the fact that low-effort criticisms are “more likely to be based on misunderstandings or otherwise low quality” is irrelevant. We can, and should, simply judge whether any given comment actually is a misunderstanding, etc., and respond appropriately.
But how often is it the case that a “long, in-depth analysis, which is lovingly illustrated [and] meticulously referenced” is, not only wrong, but so obviously wrong that the mistake can be pointed out via a simple one-liner? I claim that this so rarely occurs that it should play a negligible role in our considerations—in other words, that the hypothetical situation you describe does not reflect reality.
Taken to a extreme this road can lead to a place where a person thinks that only institutions can produce knowledge.
I tired to spend a long prose to explain my somewhat malformed fears but lets try short and interactive to have practise on the side of the discussions theory.
Trophical witch doctyor answer methodological questions that in fact he has been doing and invented from scracth inductive reasoning because being the only healer in the known world. Fake doctor by fraud assails other credibility by emphasising how western epistemogloy has peerreview and replications. While the university is struggling with reseach branches that have not done a single replication study in 10 years.
People give fraud doctor easy time and go hard on witch doctor. Those that declare witch doctors methods to be legit still face image problems and ordinary folk don’t lend their ear. Bar is high for witch doctor and low for fake doctor and clearing the bar is not significant in some important ways.
It is a distinct skill that when fake doctor prescribes wrong medice that the nurse has the audacity to think does his level of understanding confirm the appropriateness of the medication. If the nurse didn’t think of doctor as doctor he would be more critical and would let less inappropriate medication to pass.”Doctors are so hardworking we should support them” is not a proper way for nurse to adjust.
It is distinct skill to try to evaluate whether the witch doctor has invented a new medice making process without knowledge of chemistry what the active ingredient is. “Religion is ineffective hopeful thinking” is not a good adjust. The nurse skill and the witch doctor listener skills are linked.
Meanwhile “hey we have all these cool standard research practices, hope you get excited about them” is an important sell towards the witch doctor. And “you did a really good job listening to the psyhological trauma the patient was describing when checking in for a broken ankle” is important acknowledgement towards the fake doctor.
If scientist believe that you need to be scientist to have a chance to prove a scientist wrong, then science becomes immune from outside knowledge. It’s dangerous to posit that some party has monopoly on epistemological competency. If you believe so little in one-liners that you stop hearing them your longliner source better have a very fair and representative distribution. If you do not beleive a witch doctor could have done inductive experiments you don’t believe in inductive reasoning you believe in dominant cultures. If you do not believe that a doctor could be mistaken you don’t believe in empirisim but in authorative revelation.
darn still pretty long and I think this has the addiotnal property that there is lot left to imagination that saves on reading time but uses up imagination/decrypt time.
Would you care to distinguish a means of discouraging people from spending effort on low-value things, from a means that simply discourages people from spending effort in general? It seems to me that here you are taking the concept of “making things that have little or no (or even negative) value” as a primitive action—something that can be “encouraged” or “discouraged”—whereas, on the other hand, it seems to me that the true primitive action here is spending effort in the first place, and that actions taken to disincentivize the former, will in fact turn out to disincentivize the latter.
If this is in fact the case, then the question is not so simple as whether we ought to discourage posters from spending effort on making incorrect posts (to which the answer would of course be “yes, we ought”), but rather, whether we ought to discourage posters from spending effort. To this, you say:
Perhaps there is no “virtue” in effort, but in that case we must ask why “virtue” is the thing we are measuring. If the goal is to maximize, not “virtue”, but high-quality posts, then I submit that (all else being equal) having more high-effort posts is more likely to accomplish this than having fewer high-effort posts. Unless your contention is that all else is not equal (perhaps high-effort posts are more likely to contain muddled thinking, and hence more likely to have incorrect conclusions? but it’s hard to see why this should be the case a priori), then it seems to me that encouraging posters to put large amounts of effort into their posts is simply a better course of action than discouraging them.
And what does it mean to “encourage” or “discourage” a poster? Based on the following part of your comment, it seems that you are taking “discourage” to mean something along the lines of “point out ways in which the post in question is mistaken”:
But how often is it the case that a “long, in-depth analysis, which is lovingly illustrated [and] meticulously referenced” is, not only wrong, but so obviously wrong that the mistake can be pointed out via a simple one-liner? I claim that this so rarely occurs that it should play a negligible role in our considerations—in other words, that the hypothetical situation you describe does not reflect reality.
What occurs more often, I think, is that a commenter finds themselves mistakenly under the impression that they have spotted an obvious error, and then proceeds to post (what they believe to be) an obvious refutation. I further claim that such cases are disproportionately responsible for the so-called “drive-by low-effort criticism” described in the OP. It may be that you disagree with this, but whether it is true or not is in a matter of factual accuracy, not opinion. However, if one happens to believe it is true, then it should not be difficult to understand why one might prefer to see less of the described behavior.
I don’t think high-effort posts are more likely to contain muddled thinking, but I do think readers are less likely to notice muddled thinking when it appears in high-effort posts, so suppressing criticism of high-effort posts is especially dangerous.
Sure, that’s easy: apply the discouragement (downvotes, critical comments, etc.) only to low-value things, and not to high-value things.
Or are you suggesting that you (or, perhaps, Less Wrong participants in general?) can’t tell the difference between low-value things and high-value things?
“Virtue” here means “whatever we take to be good and desirable, and that which produces those things”. We are measuring it because it is, by definition, the thing we want to be measuring.
[emphasis mine]
Did you mean to write “high-effort”, in place of the bolded part? (If, however, you meant what you wrote, then I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, here; please explain.)
I mean whatever the OP means when he talks about adverse effects, etc.
Not that often, sadly. (Here’s an example. Here’s another. Here’s one which is three short sentences. Here’s another one-liner. This one is two sentences. This one is also two sentences. Another one-liner.) It’s hard to do this sort of thing well; it’s easier to write a long, rambling comment. That is exactly why such density of refutation should be encouraged, not discouraged; because it is highly desirable, but difficult (and thus rare).
Yes, we should discourage low-quality criticism which is wrong, and encourage high-quality criticism which is right. (I already said this, in the grandparent.) Having accounted for this, it makes no sense at all to prefer longer critical comments to shorter ones. (Quite the opposite preference would be sensible, in fact.)
I think that compared to high-effort criticisms, low-effort criticisms are much more likely to be based on misunderstandings or otherwise low quality. I interpret Lionhearted as saying that criticism should, on the margin, be held to a higher bar than it is now.
What is the evaluation of “effort” even doing here? Why not just evaluate whether the criticism is high-quality, understands the post, is correct, etc?
Requiring “effort” (independent of quality) is a proof-of-work scheme meant to tax criticism.
Proof-of-work was originally invented to fight email spam. The analogous argument plausibly applies here: evaluating quality (e.g., letting a human read the email to decide what to do with it, trying to figure out whether a criticism actually makes sense) is costly, so it’s more efficient to first filter using a cheaper-to-evaluate signal/proxy like work/effort. (I don’t think this is the OP’s argument though, which is based more on low effort criticism feeling unpleasant or discouraging to some post authors. I’m kind of going off on a tangent based on your mention of “proof of work”.)
ETA: I recalled that I actually wrote a post about this: Think Before You Speak (And Signal It).
As clone of saturn points out elsethread, criticism of high-effort posts is especially valuable.
Now, at first glance this may seem orthogonal to what you said—which was about how much effort went into the criticism, rather than how much went into the post—but note that evaluation of a criticism as “low-effort” is relative. If I write a very well-researched and lengthy post, and you write the median comment (in effort, length, etc.) in reply, that is “low-effort” relative to the post I wrote, yes?
This implies that criticism which is low-effort relative to the post it is responding to, should not only not be held to a higher bar, but in fact that it should be held to a lower bar!
That having been said, it is of course good to discourage bad criticism. But the point is that “how much effort went into this” is simply orthogonal to quality—and this is true for posts as well as comments.
So, we should discourage bad posts, and encourage good ones. We should discourage bad criticism, and encourage good criticism.
We should not, however, encourage high-effort posts merely for being high-effort, nor should we discourage low-effort criticism merely for being low-effort. What matters is results.
And note that the fact that low-effort criticisms are “more likely to be based on misunderstandings or otherwise low quality” is irrelevant. We can, and should, simply judge whether any given comment actually is a misunderstanding, etc., and respond appropriately.
Taken to a extreme this road can lead to a place where a person thinks that only institutions can produce knowledge.
I tired to spend a long prose to explain my somewhat malformed fears but lets try short and interactive to have practise on the side of the discussions theory.
Trophical witch doctyor answer methodological questions that in fact he has been doing and invented from scracth inductive reasoning because being the only healer in the known world. Fake doctor by fraud assails other credibility by emphasising how western epistemogloy has peerreview and replications. While the university is struggling with reseach branches that have not done a single replication study in 10 years.
People give fraud doctor easy time and go hard on witch doctor. Those that declare witch doctors methods to be legit still face image problems and ordinary folk don’t lend their ear. Bar is high for witch doctor and low for fake doctor and clearing the bar is not significant in some important ways.
It is a distinct skill that when fake doctor prescribes wrong medice that the nurse has the audacity to think does his level of understanding confirm the appropriateness of the medication. If the nurse didn’t think of doctor as doctor he would be more critical and would let less inappropriate medication to pass.”Doctors are so hardworking we should support them” is not a proper way for nurse to adjust.
It is distinct skill to try to evaluate whether the witch doctor has invented a new medice making process without knowledge of chemistry what the active ingredient is. “Religion is ineffective hopeful thinking” is not a good adjust. The nurse skill and the witch doctor listener skills are linked.
Meanwhile “hey we have all these cool standard research practices, hope you get excited about them” is an important sell towards the witch doctor. And “you did a really good job listening to the psyhological trauma the patient was describing when checking in for a broken ankle” is important acknowledgement towards the fake doctor.
If scientist believe that you need to be scientist to have a chance to prove a scientist wrong, then science becomes immune from outside knowledge. It’s dangerous to posit that some party has monopoly on epistemological competency. If you believe so little in one-liners that you stop hearing them your longliner source better have a very fair and representative distribution. If you do not beleive a witch doctor could have done inductive experiments you don’t believe in inductive reasoning you believe in dominant cultures. If you do not believe that a doctor could be mistaken you don’t believe in empirisim but in authorative revelation.
darn still pretty long and I think this has the addiotnal property that there is lot left to imagination that saves on reading time but uses up imagination/decrypt time.