You might want to put a big bold please read the post before voting on the comments, this is a game where voting works differently right at the beginning of your post, just in case people dive in without reading very carefully.
I recommend adding, up in the italicized introduction, a remark to the effect that in order to participate in this game one should disable any viewing threshold for negatively voted comments.
If anyone wants to do this again or otherwise use voting weirdly, it is probably a good idea to have everyone put a disclaimer at the beginning of their comment warning that it’s part of the experiment, for the sake of the recent comments thread. (I don’t trust any of the scores on this post. At the very least, I expect people to vote up anything at −3 or below that doesn’t sound insulting in isolation.)
I’ve felt for a while that LW has a pretty serious problem of people voting from the recent comments page without considering the context.
Aggregating accusations of overconfidence with underconfidence seems absurd to me.
Thus people should (and, I think, did) phrase their predictions to be accused of overconfidence, so that if I propose that Antipope Christopher would have been a good leader at 30%, it’s not because I expect most people put it at 90%.
I believe that the fact that we upvote for disagreement in either direction means it will be very hard to interpret the results. I think this game would have been more useful if the person making the claim made it clear which direction he felt disagreement was in and we only upvoted for disagreement in that direction.
I thought I’d taken into account the probabilistic burdensomeness of being contrarian with respect to highly intelligent people, but after seeing some of the obviously wrong things here and the corresponding gross overconfidences, I feel considerably less certain.
I don’t know if the fact that actually seeing evidence that I should have expected to see changes my probability-feeling means something profound and important about aliefs vs. beliefs, or if it just means I’m bad at assigning confidence levels.
Thanks! Are you going to add any comments? I always got the impression from your comments that you had odd/interesting/unpopular ideas that I’d like to hear to explained in better context.
Gah. Deleted it because I figured nobody would still be playing. Reposting:
The Big Bang was not the event that created our universe. The real cause was a naturalistic event, which we have not yet theorised, due to lack of scientific knowledge. (15%)
Metadiscussion: Reply to this comment to discuss the game itself, or anything else that’s not a proposition for upvotes/downvotes.
You might want to put a big bold please read the post before voting on the comments, this is a game where voting works differently right at the beginning of your post, just in case people dive in without reading very carefully.
Good suggestion, thank you.
This post makes the recent comments thread look seriously messed up!
Sorry! Couldn’t think of any other way to provide good incentives for organized insanity.
It wasn’t a complaint. :)
I recommend adding, up in the italicized introduction, a remark to the effect that in order to participate in this game one should disable any viewing threshold for negatively voted comments.
Or just click on the “negative voted” comments to see what they are...
Right, damn, I forgot about that since I deactivated it. Thanks!
If anyone wants to do this again or otherwise use voting weirdly, it is probably a good idea to have everyone put a disclaimer at the beginning of their comment warning that it’s part of the experiment, for the sake of the recent comments thread.
(I don’t trust any of the scores on this post. At the very least, I expect people to vote up anything at −3 or below that doesn’t sound insulting in isolation.)
I’ve felt for a while that LW has a pretty serious problem of people voting from the recent comments page without considering the context.
The karma scores seem to have gotten closer to what I would have expected. Agree with your point though.
Aggregating accusations of overconfidence with underconfidence seems absurd to me.
Thus people should (and, I think, did) phrase their predictions to be accused of overconfidence, so that if I propose that Antipope Christopher would have been a good leader at 30%, it’s not because I expect most people put it at 90%.
Great idea for a post. I’ve really enjoyed reading the comments and discussion they generated.
At first I didn’t think this was a good idea, but now I think it is brilliant. Bravo!
How about replying to posts with what you think the probability should be.
Good idea, I’ll suggest people do so in the post. That way you can see if people are more or less confident in your belief than you are.
I believe that the fact that we upvote for disagreement in either direction means it will be very hard to interpret the results. I think this game would have been more useful if the person making the claim made it clear which direction he felt disagreement was in and we only upvoted for disagreement in that direction.
I thought I’d taken into account the probabilistic burdensomeness of being contrarian with respect to highly intelligent people, but after seeing some of the obviously wrong things here and the corresponding gross overconfidences, I feel considerably less certain.
I don’t know if the fact that actually seeing evidence that I should have expected to see changes my probability-feeling means something profound and important about aliefs vs. beliefs, or if it just means I’m bad at assigning confidence levels.
This sub-thread needs the word “META” in it somewhere! Incidentally, interesting game!
Thanks! Are you going to add any comments? I always got the impression from your comments that you had odd/interesting/unpopular ideas that I’d like to hear to explained in better context.
Should upvotes go to comments where my probability estimate is significantly lower or higher, or just when mine is lower?
Different in either direction, I’ll note that in the post.
Gah. Deleted it because I figured nobody would still be playing. Reposting:
The Big Bang was not the event that created our universe. The real cause was a naturalistic event, which we have not yet theorised, due to lack of scientific knowledge. (15%)