One thing I do want to note is that while I think you’re pointing at a real phenomena, I don’t actually think the two examples you gave for my post are quite pointing at the right thing.
I want to note that, this fact having been pointed out, it is now incumbent upon anyone who thinks that the OP describes a real thing (whether OP himself, or you, or anyone else who agrees) to come up with new examples (see this comment for details).
I had asked Lauren specifically to crosspost her comment from facebook (where she’d been replying to a shorter version of the post, which I’d deliberately abridged to hit the most important points). And meanwhile, Qiaochu is my roommate and we’ve had a lot of extended discussions about the overall issue.
I think that it would, generally speaking, help if these sorts of facts about a comment’s provenance were noted explicitly. (Don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing at all wrong with this sort of thing! But knowing context like this is just very useful for avoiding confusion.)
The failure mode I’m worried about is something more like “there’s a particular risk of low-effort criticism missing the point, or being wrong, or dragging the author into a conversation that isn’t worth their time.” I don’t have a good principled distinction between that failure mode and “criticism that is actually correctly noticing that the author has made some basic mistakes that invalidate the rest of their post.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the karma system is both intended to, and actually (mostly) does, solve this problem.
To wit: if I write a post, and someone posts a low-effort comment which I think is simply a misunderstanding, or borne of not reading what I wrote, etc., I am free to simply not engage with it. No one can force me to reply, after all! But now suppose that just such a comment is upvoted, and has a high karma score. Now I stop and read it again and think about it more carefully—after all, a number of my peers among the Less Wrong commentariat seem to consider it worthy of their upvotes, so perhaps I’ve reflexively sorted it into the “low-effort nonsense” bin unjustly. And, even if I still end up with the same conclusion about the comment’s value, still I might (indeed, should) post at least a short reply—even if only to say “I don’t see how this isn’t addressed in the post; could you (or someone else) elaborate on this criticism?” (or something to that effect).
I want to note that, this fact having been pointed out, it is now incumbent upon anyone who thinks that the OP describes a real thing (whether OP himself, or you, or anyone else who agrees) to come up with new examples (see this comment for details).
I think that it would, generally speaking, help if these sorts of facts about a comment’s provenance were noted explicitly. (Don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing at all wrong with this sort of thing! But knowing context like this is just very useful for avoiding confusion.)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the karma system is both intended to, and actually (mostly) does, solve this problem.
To wit: if I write a post, and someone posts a low-effort comment which I think is simply a misunderstanding, or borne of not reading what I wrote, etc., I am free to simply not engage with it. No one can force me to reply, after all! But now suppose that just such a comment is upvoted, and has a high karma score. Now I stop and read it again and think about it more carefully—after all, a number of my peers among the Less Wrong commentariat seem to consider it worthy of their upvotes, so perhaps I’ve reflexively sorted it into the “low-effort nonsense” bin unjustly. And, even if I still end up with the same conclusion about the comment’s value, still I might (indeed, should) post at least a short reply—even if only to say “I don’t see how this isn’t addressed in the post; could you (or someone else) elaborate on this criticism?” (or something to that effect).