This post is a place to discuss meta-level issues regarding Less Wrong. Such posts may or may not be the unique venue for such discussion in the future.
This post is a place to discuss meta-level issues regarding Less Wrong. Such posts may or may not be the unique venue for such discussion in the future.
Best compliment this site got on August 24th, 2009:
"Less Wrong. Overcoming Bias. Visiting those sites for the first time is equatable to receiving an invitation to Hogwarts."
Mormon2 has completely outlived his pretense at being anything but a pure 100% troll, so if it's all right with everyone I'm going to just start removing all his comments from this point forward. (It would be preferable to rely on readers to vote him down to -4 on everything, but we don't have that level of constant vigilance.)
Don't do it. I think it's essential for us to be able to recognize and deal with trolls (both OL and RL), and he's a perfectly good training dummy. Engaging him in his -4 threads doesn't make the signal to noise ratio worse as they're folded up. He shouldn't be allowed to make posts even if his karma rises to 20 though.
Do people think that "Don't Feed the Trolls" should apply to mormon2 in all his myriad identities (sharing numerous matching spelling errors, the same personal insults of Eliezer and Less Wrongers, creationism and other baiting tactics)? He has used exploits on the karma system, lied about his credentials and the links between his identities, and regularly makes rude personal attacks on people other than Eliezer. The only plausibly positive thing mormon2 has done is ask Eliezer for info about his work at SIAI, but he ignores answers and doesn't a...
I wonder if top-level posts should have a higher karma weighting than comments. A good post takes longer to write than an average comment, but a funny one-liner can get as many upvotes as a long, promoted post. If I wanted to maximize my karma total, which I admit does attract me at times, my time would be best spent with writing as many comments as possible, and no top-level posts. This doesn't feel entirely right.
I'll repeat my suggestion that posts be able to have language tags (i.e. one tag that says "English", "Español", "Français", etc., automatically set to English for currently existing posts), and that there be an option under Preferences to filter posts by language (probably defaulting to English and, if applicable, the language of the region the user is connected from).
ETA: By "posts", I mean articles, not comments.
I am not a fan of internet currency in all its forms generally because it draws attention away from the argument.
Reddit, which this is based on, went to disabling a subtractive karma rule for all submissions and comments. Submissions with down votes greater than up votes just don't go anywhere while negative comment votes get buried similar to how they do here. That seems like a good way to organize the system.
Is the reason that it was implemented in order to be signaling for other users or is it just an artifact of the reddit API? Would disabling the act...
I have no clever reply to most of your comment, but:
I personally do not submit more responses and posts because of the karma system.
In my case, it's very much a motivating factor. In fact, I do not think I would have ever been led to comment or post at all without karma. I think this is primarily because I consider it exceptionally valuable, easy-to-read instant feedback on how I'm being received, which I'm normally bad at discerning and find a very important component of any sort of interaction. I virtually never comment on other blogs at all.
Tags now sort chronologically oldest-to-newest, which makes them much more convenient for reading through things.
I've been retagging my old posts on an ad-hoc basis. Since code changes to the LW codebase are hard to come by, there's no good way to give other people permission to do this without giving them full admin rights.
The book Influence science and practice by Robert Cialdini identifies six main heuristics for which I have made a mnemonic to identify influence attempts
A little proposal for what top-level posts should be allowed:
A post is allowed if it's on-topic, not highly objectionable, and competently done. A post is considered on-topic iff it's one of the following:
I would like to see a system where arguments could be analyzed and tagged to identify the specific cognitive biases used.
The book Influence science and practice by Robert Cialdini seems to me to identify six main heuristics for which I have made a mnemonic Friendship and liking Opportunity of a scarce nature Reciprocity Commitment and consistency Expertise and authority Social proof *FORCES of mental gravity aka cognitive bias
Here is an example John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him s...
I would like to see a system where arguments could be analyzed and tagged to identify the specific cognitive biases used.
The book Influence science and practice by Robert Cialdini seems to me to identify six main heuristics for which I have made a mnemonic Friendship and liking Opportunity of a scarce nature Reciprocity Commitment and consistency Expertise and authority Social proof *FORCES of mental gravity aka cognitive bias
Here is an example John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in h...
May we call this new post "Criticisms about Eliezer" so that I can completely ignore it?
For me, Less Wrong is about ideas and I am bored by these [off] and [on] criticisms. It's an interesting observation that trolls are pretty easily identifiable by their decision that the first thing that has to be done when they arrive here is challenge you with some kind personal attack. So instead of calling it, "Criticisms about Eliezer", we could equally call it "Entering Primate Chest-Beating".
In the response he claims that his spelling and grammar errors were intentionally adopted as a trick, but then makes more in the response. Likewise with respect to crude and offensive language. The guy has been caught lying about numerous other things, and transparently lied in that response.
CitationNeeded, thanks for that link. I'm not sure how clear it is that these several commenters are the same person, but i can see why you'd be suspicious. Interesting that most of mormon2's early comments were upvoted, until recently he adopts this hostile tone. And rereading the "question of rationality", mormon2 remains belligerent in the response, so i'm inclined to agree with wedrifid's "juvenile rationalization" conclusion.
So, i understand dismissing mormon2 specifically, even if i think that listening-to-arguments-from-possib... (read more)