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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Extraterrestrial paperclip maximizers - Less Wrong
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...and why don't they vote them down to oblivion?
...and why do we even have a anonymous voting system that will become ever more useless as the number of idiots like me joining this site is increasing exponentially?
Seriously, I'd like to be able to see who down-voted me to be able to judge if it is just the author of the post/comment I replied to, a certain interest group like the utilitarian bunch, or someone who's judgement I actually value or is widely held to be valuable. After all there is a difference in whether it was XiXiDu or Eliezer Yudkowsky who down-voted you?
I'm not sure making voting public would improve voting quality (i.e. correlation between post quality and points earned), because it might give rise to more reticence to downvote, and more hostility between members who downvoted each others' posts.
If votes had to be public then I would adopt a policy of never, ever downvoting. We already have people taking downvoting as a slight and demanding explanation; I don't want to deal with someone demanding that I, specifically, explain why their post is bad, especially not when the downvote was barely given any thought to begin with and the topic doesn't interest me, which is the usual case with downvoting.
Do we have that? It seems that we more have people confused about why a remark was downvoted and wanting to understand the logic.
That suggests that your downvotes don't mean much, and might even be not helpful for the signal/noise ratio of the karma system. If you generally downvote when you haven't given much thought to the matter what is causing you to downvote?
That scenario has less potential for conflict, but it still creates a social obligation for me to do work that I didn't mean to volunteer for.
I meant, not much thought relative to the amount required to write a good comment on the topic, which is on the order of 5-10 minutes minimum if the topic is simple, longer if it's complex. On the other hand, I can often detect confusion, motivated cognition, repetition of a misunderstanding I've seen before, and other downvote-worthy flaws on a single read-through, which takes on the order of 30 seconds.
It's a pretty weak obligation, though-- people only tend to ask about the reasons if they're getting a lot of downvotes, so you can probably leave answering to someone else.
(I don't see the need for self-deprecation.)
I am glad that voting is anonymous. If I could see who downvoted comments that I considered good then I would rapidly gain contempt for those members. I would prefer to limit my awareness of people's poor reasoning or undesirable values to things they actually think through enough to comment on.
I note that sometimes I gain generalised contempt for the judgement of all people who are following a particular conversation based on the overall voting patterns on the comments. That is all the information I need to decide that participation in that conversation is not beneficial. If I could see exactly who was doing the voting that would just interfere with my ability to take those members seriously in the future.
No matter. You'll start to question that preference
For most people it is very hard not to question your own judgement when it is subject to substantial disagreement. Nevertheless, "you being wrong" is not the only reason for other people to disagree with you.
We already have the ability to ask why a comment is up or down voted. Because we currently have anonymity such questions can be asked without being a direct social challenge to those who voted. This cuts out all sorts of biases.
A counter-example to a straw man. (I agree and maintain my previous claim.)
If I understand the point in question it seems we are in agreement - voting is evidence about the reasoning of the voter which can in turn be evidence about the comment itself. In the case of downvotes (and this is where we disagree), I actually think it is better that we don't have access to that evidence. Mostly because down that road lies politics and partly because people don't all have the same criteria for voting. There is a difference between "I think the comment should be at +4 but it is currently at +6", "I think this comment contains bad reasoning", "this comment is on the opposing side of the argument", "this comment is of lesser quality than the parent and/or child" and "I am reciprocating voting behavior". Down this road lies madness.
I don't think we disagree substantially on this.
We do seem to have have a different picture of the the likely influence of public voting if it were to replace anonymous voting. From what you are saying part of this difference would seem to be due to differences in the way we account for the social influence of negative (and even just different) social feedback. A high priority for me is minimising any undesirable effects of (social) politics on both the conversation in general and on me in particular.
Pardon me. I deleted the grandparent planning to move it to a meta thread. The comment, fresh from the clipboard in the form that I would have re-posted, is this:
Thats ok. For what it is worth, while I upvoted your comment this time I'll probably downvote future instances of self-deprecation. I also tend to downvote people when they apologise for no reason. I just find wussy behaviors annoying. I actually stopped watching The Sorcerer's Apprentice a couple of times before I got to the end - even Nicholas Cage as a millenia old vagabond shooting lightening balls from his hands can only balance out so much self-deprecation from his apprentice.
Note that some instances of self-deprecation are highly effective and quite the opposite of wussy, but it is a fairly advanced social move that only achieves useful ends if you know exactly what you are doing.
For most people it is very hard not to question your own judgement when it is subject to substantial disagreement. Nevertheless, "you being wrong" is not the only reason for other people to disagree with you. Those biasses you mention are quite prolific.
We already have the ability to ask why a comment is up or down voted. Because we currently have anonymity such questions can be asked without being a direct social challenge to those who voted. This cuts out all sorts of biases and allows communication that would not be possible if votes were out there in the open.
A counter-example to a straw man. (I agree and maintain my previous claim.)
That could be considered a 'high quality problem'. That many people wishing to explore concepts related to improving rational thinking and behavior would be remarkable!
I do actually agree that the karma system could be better implemented. The best karma system I have seen was one in which the weight of votes depended on the karma of the voter. The example I am thinking of allocated weight vote according to 'rank' but when plotted the vote/voter.karma relationship would look approximately logarithmic. That system would be farm more stable and probably more useful than the one we have, although it is somewhat less simple.
Another feature that some sites have is making only positive votes public. (This is something that I would support.)
Where were the logarithmic karma system used?
The stability could be a problem in the moderately unlikely event that the core group is going sour and new members have a better grasp. I grant that it's more likely to have a lot of new members who don't understand the core values of the group.
I don't think it would be a problem to have a system which gives both the number and total karma-weight of votes.
It was a system that used VBulletin, which includes such a module. I have seen similar features available in other similar systems that I have made use of at various times.
True, and unfortunately most systems short of an AI with the 'correct' values will be vulnerable to human stupidity.
No particular problem, but probably not necessary just yet!