ciphergoth comments on Advice for AI makers - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 14 January 2010 11:32AM

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Comment author: ciphergoth 18 January 2010 01:20:58PM *  0 points [-]

In seriousness, why would you deliberately evoke a hypothesis that you know is wildly unrealistic? Surely whatever the real reasons for the downvoting pattern are, they are relevant to your enquiry?

Comment author: Bo102010 18 January 2010 01:24:41PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps "cabal who gathered to make a decision [to downvote]" is an overly ominous image.

However, we've seen cases where every one of someone's comments has been downvoted in a short span of time, which is clearly not the typical reason for a downvoting.

That's the kind of thing I was asking about.

Comment author: RobinZ 18 January 2010 04:00:54PM 3 points [-]

It is possible the first downvote tends to attract further downvotes (by priming, for example), but an equally parsimonious explanation is that there are several people refreshing the comments page at a time and a subset of them dislike the content independently.

Comment author: ciphergoth 18 January 2010 01:41:21PM *  1 point [-]

But you can still be very confident that actual collusion wasn't involved, so you shouldn't be talking as if it might have been.

EDIT: as always I'm keen to know why the downvote - thanks! My current theory is that they come across as hostile, which they weren't meant to, but I'd value better data than my guesses.