I find it somewhat troubling that my flip reply to your comment has netted me more karma than any of my other recent contributions.

Any sufficiently advanced karma-whoring is indistinguishable from a useful comment. I personally don't care for karma, but I maintain that I regret the post for wasting people's time.

Upvoted for indistinguishable insight. Downvoted for the overused and inaccurate "don't care about karma" signal. Downvoted 7 other comments by you at random because you don't care and I'm in an arbitrary mood. :)

I also downvoted Normal's comment because the "karma-whoring" comment was glaringly inaccurate.

Any sufficiently advanced karma-whoring is indistinguishable from a useful comment. I personally don't care for karma, but I maintain that I regret the post for wasting people's time.

It was an interesting idea. I approve of this kind of meta-comment in general; I just don't want it to become a bigger part of the comment pool and/or a way of accumulating karma. I do care about the karma system because I think it's useful to know what intelligent people think of me (and I get a fuzzy feeling from positive reinforcement).

I don't believe there are any real karma-whores on Less Wrong. I'm detailing my beliefs here in an attempt to accurately signal my ability to think about things; I presume it follows that anyone who can think for more than four seconds shouldn't actually continue to gain pleasure from getting karma for stupid comments. I attempt to signal this because I would not myself wish to learn of the existence of karma-whores on Less Wrong and assume you are the same.

You assume correctly. I hope there aren't any real karma whores either. I don't really think of you as one, just of that sort of comment as the sort of thing a karma whore would do.

Note the (tenuous) irony; I predicted such criticisms of the post as I wrote it! I hoped people would enjoy reading it; not make conclusions about karma-whoring, which would be bad because I do not gain anything by learning that I have made the readers of Less Wrong unhappy. I do further wonder how many up- or down-votes the first N predictions unaccompanied would have garnered, but I won't tempt fate by doing trials.

I did enjoy reading it, to a limited extent. That and the insightful, useful nature of the parent make this interaction a net gain for me. In conclusion, I upvoted the parent.