I, on the other hand, strong-upvoted it (and while I didn’t downvote Kerry’s reply, I must say that I find such “why aren’t you downvoting this comment, guys? doesn’t it break the rules??” comments to be obnoxious in general).
I find this kind of question really valuable. The karma system has massive benefits, but it can also be emotionally tough, and especially so for people with status regulating emotions. In my experience, discussing reasons for voting explicitly usually makes me feel better about it, even though I don’t have a gears model of why that is, I’m just reporting on observed data points. Maybe because it provides affirmation that we’re basically all trying to do the right thing rather than fight some kind of zero sum game.
An unendorsed part of my intention is to complain about the comment since I found it annoying. Depending on how loudly that reads as being my goal, my comment might deserve to be downvoted to discourage focusing the conversation on complaints of this type.
The endorsed part of my intention is that the LW conversations about Leverage 1.0 would likely benefit from commentary by people who know what actually went on in Leverage 1.0. Unfortunately, the set of “people who have knowledge of Leverage 1.0 and are also comfortable on LW” is really small. I’m trying to see if I am in this set by trying to understand LW norms more explicitly. This is admittedly a rather personal goal, and perhaps it ought to be discouraged for that reason, but I think indulging me a little bit is consonant with the goals of the community as I understand them.
Also, to render an implicit thing I’m doing explicit, I think I keep identifying myself as an outsider to LW as a request for something like hospitality. It occurs to me that this might not be a social form that LW endorses! If so, then my comment probably deserves to be downvoted from the LW perspective.
I hope you will feel comfortable here. I think you are following the LW norms quite okay. You seem to take the karma too seriously, but that’s what new users are sometimes prone to do; karma is an important signal, but it also inevitably contains noise; in long term it usually seems to work okay. If that means something for you, your comments are upvoted a lot.
I apologize for the annoying style of my comment. I will try to avoid doing so in the future, though I cannot in good faith make a promise to do so; sorry about that.
I sincerely believe that Geoff is a dangerous person, and I view his actions with great suspicion. This is not meant as an attack on you. Feel free to correct me whenever I am factually wrong; I prefer being corrected to staying mistaken. (Also, thanks to both Rob and Said for doing what they believed was the right thing.)
Unfortunately, the set of “people who have knowledge of Leverage 1.0 and are also comfortable on LW” is really small.
[Biting my tongue hard to avoid a sarcastic response. Trying to channel my inner Duncan. Realizing that I am actually trying to write a sarcastic response using mock-Duncan’s voice. Sheesh, this stuff is difficult… Am I being meta-sarcastic now? By the way, Wikipedia says that sarcasm is illegal in North Korea; I am not making this up...]
I am under impression that (some) Leverage members signed non-disclosure agreements. Therefore, when I observe the lack of Leverage supporters on LW, there are at least two competing explanations matching the known data, and I am not sure how to decide which one is closer to reality:
rationalist community and LW express negative attitude towards people supporting Leverage, so they avoid the environment they perceive as unfriendly;
people involved with Leverage cannot speak openly about Leverage… maybe only about some aspects of it, but not discussing Leverage at all helps them stay on the safe side;
and perhaps, also some kind of “null hypothesis” is worth considering, such as:
LW only attracts a small fraction of the population; only a few people have insider knowledge of Leverage; it is not unlikely that the intersection of these two sets just happens to be empty.
Do I understand you correctly as suggesting that the negative attitude of LW towards Leverage is the actual reason why we do not have more conversations about Leverage here? I am aware of some criticism of the Connection Theory on LW; is this what you have in mind, or something else? (Well, obviously the Zoe’s article, but that only happened recently so it can’t explain the absence of Leverage supporters before that.)
To me it seems that the combination of “Geoff prefers some level of secrecy about Leverage activities” + “Connection Theory was not well received on LW” + “there are only a few people in Leverage anyway” is a sufficient explanation of why the Leverage voices have been missing on LW. Do you have some evidence that contradicts this?
FWIW I downvoted Viliam’s comment soon after he posted it, and have strong-downvoted it now that it has more karma.
I, on the other hand, strong-upvoted it (and while I didn’t downvote Kerry’s reply, I must say that I find such “why aren’t you downvoting this comment, guys? doesn’t it break the rules??” comments to be obnoxious in general).
I find this kind of question really valuable. The karma system has massive benefits, but it can also be emotionally tough, and especially so for people with status regulating emotions. In my experience, discussing reasons for voting explicitly usually makes me feel better about it, even though I don’t have a gears model of why that is, I’m just reporting on observed data points. Maybe because it provides affirmation that we’re basically all trying to do the right thing rather than fight some kind of zero sum game.
That seems basically fair.
An unendorsed part of my intention is to complain about the comment since I found it annoying. Depending on how loudly that reads as being my goal, my comment might deserve to be downvoted to discourage focusing the conversation on complaints of this type.
The endorsed part of my intention is that the LW conversations about Leverage 1.0 would likely benefit from commentary by people who know what actually went on in Leverage 1.0. Unfortunately, the set of “people who have knowledge of Leverage 1.0 and are also comfortable on LW” is really small. I’m trying to see if I am in this set by trying to understand LW norms more explicitly. This is admittedly a rather personal goal, and perhaps it ought to be discouraged for that reason, but I think indulging me a little bit is consonant with the goals of the community as I understand them.
Also, to render an implicit thing I’m doing explicit, I think I keep identifying myself as an outsider to LW as a request for something like hospitality. It occurs to me that this might not be a social form that LW endorses! If so, then my comment probably deserves to be downvoted from the LW perspective.
I hope you will feel comfortable here. I think you are following the LW norms quite okay. You seem to take the karma too seriously, but that’s what new users are sometimes prone to do; karma is an important signal, but it also inevitably contains noise; in long term it usually seems to work okay. If that means something for you, your comments are upvoted a lot.
I apologize for the annoying style of my comment. I will try to avoid doing so in the future, though I cannot in good faith make a promise to do so; sorry about that.
I sincerely believe that Geoff is a dangerous person, and I view his actions with great suspicion. This is not meant as an attack on you. Feel free to correct me whenever I am factually wrong; I prefer being corrected to staying mistaken. (Also, thanks to both Rob and Said for doing what they believed was the right thing.)
[Biting my tongue hard to avoid a sarcastic response. Trying to channel my inner Duncan. Realizing that I am actually trying to write a sarcastic response using mock-Duncan’s voice. Sheesh, this stuff is difficult… Am I being meta-sarcastic now? By the way, Wikipedia says that sarcasm is illegal in North Korea; I am not making this up...]
I am under impression that (some) Leverage members signed non-disclosure agreements. Therefore, when I observe the lack of Leverage supporters on LW, there are at least two competing explanations matching the known data, and I am not sure how to decide which one is closer to reality:
rationalist community and LW express negative attitude towards people supporting Leverage, so they avoid the environment they perceive as unfriendly;
people involved with Leverage cannot speak openly about Leverage… maybe only about some aspects of it, but not discussing Leverage at all helps them stay on the safe side;
and perhaps, also some kind of “null hypothesis” is worth considering, such as:
LW only attracts a small fraction of the population; only a few people have insider knowledge of Leverage; it is not unlikely that the intersection of these two sets just happens to be empty.
Do I understand you correctly as suggesting that the negative attitude of LW towards Leverage is the actual reason why we do not have more conversations about Leverage here? I am aware of some criticism of the Connection Theory on LW; is this what you have in mind, or something else? (Well, obviously the Zoe’s article, but that only happened recently so it can’t explain the absence of Leverage supporters before that.)
To me it seems that the combination of “Geoff prefers some level of secrecy about Leverage activities” + “Connection Theory was not well received on LW” + “there are only a few people in Leverage anyway” is a sufficient explanation of why the Leverage voices have been missing on LW. Do you have some evidence that contradicts this?