Constant comments on Costs and Benefits of Scholarship - Less Wrong

40 Post author: lukeprog 22 March 2011 02:19AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 23 March 2011 03:25:21AM * 9 points [-]

But I think that one can write for a very, very long time about sexual politics in Victorian literature without ever running into a situation where lack of knowledge of science beyond a high school level is going to be a problem. It's certainly difficult to imagine it resulting in nonsense production that goes beyond a stray sentence here or there.

I strongly disagree here. To write meaningfully about sexual politics, you must have a model of sexual and other related aspects of human thought and behavior, and modern science has a whole lot to say about that. (Of course, the relevant science is still very incomplete and far from settled, but that makes it even more important to be knowledgeable about it, in order to separate solid insight from speculation.) If you lack that knowledge, your model is likely to be wrong in at least some ways that could be corrected by familiarizing yourself with the relevant science, and this is likely to show in your writing. Moreover, there is a whole lot of spurious pseudo-insight in this area (Freudianism and its offshoots being the most notorious example), and if you're not familiar with science beyond a high school level, you may well end up swallowing a lot of such nonsense believing it to be solid insight and incorporating it into your work.

Comment author: [deleted] comment score below threshold [+] (27 children)

Comment author: Alicorn 23 March 2011 03:59:05AM * 9 points [-]

Downvoting is already limited by social capital (how many times you can downvote is a fucntion of your own karma score). Causing it to also decrease one's karma would discourage downvoting outright instead of merely limiting it, and that is an unwanted thing.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 04:05:33AM 0 points [-]

Well, I don't think we can say a priori that my proposal would not work. I think it might, because I think it reflects what happens in the real world enforcement of social rules. The enforcer puts himself on the line in the real world. You want the would be police to pay a certain price.

But I'm glad that, as you mention, there seems to be some sort of limit. I suspect it's not enough.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 23 March 2011 04:43:29AM 4 points [-]

Note that downvoting isn't particularly censorious, here. A specific comment has to get multiple downvotes on its own merits to be hidden (comments from users with net-negative karma are throttled, but not hidden); even then the comment is just hidden, not removed, and there's a clear marker that the comment exists. Further, individual users can turn off the option of having downvoted comments hidden - I have, and if I remember correctly I've seen others mention that they've done so as well. Individuals' overall karma scores are not especially visible and don't affect very much, especially when one has more than 100-200 karma or so and is not especially at risk of going under the cutoff for posting to the main area of the site.

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2011 05:22:34AM 2 points [-]

Note that downvoting isn't particularly censorious, here. A specific comment has to get multiple downvotes on its own merits to be hidden

The problem is that there is bandwagon behavior: a comment with a negative score will tend to be downvoted further. (This also applies on the positive side.)

Also, while a negative score may not prevent a comment from being viewed, it will have status repercussions on the author, as readers make note of it. The tendency will be for readers to pay less attention to comments by that user.

Comment author: benelliott 23 March 2011 04:12:33PM 5 points [-]

The problem is that there is bandwagon behavior: a comment with a negative score will tend to be downvoted further. (This also applies on the positive side.)

Does this happen? I think my behaviour is actually the opposite, I sometimes upvote comments that I think have been downvoted unfairly even though I probably wouldn't consider them worth an upvote otherwise.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 23 March 2011 04:55:23PM 2 points [-]

Does this happen?

It would be startling if conformity bias didn't operate here, and I don't see much evidence that it doesn't.

That said, I don't think these are mutually exclusive. I often upvote after (IMO) unearned downvotes, and sometimes downvote after unearned upvotes, but that doesn't mean I'm not subject to the bandwagon effect.

Comment author: Perplexed 23 March 2011 04:29:47PM 1 point [-]

The bandwagon effect is real, I think. My own behavior is to pay particular attention to heavily upvoted or downvoted comments to see if I can see the reason for the excitement. If I can't find a reason, I will often vote the opposite way, as you do. But I usually find the reason. And then I can't resist adding my voice to the crowd's.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 06:35:30PM 1 point [-]

And since the upvoting and downvoting is silent and anonymous, the reasons for it should and I think do(#) tend to resemble the reasons of democratic voting, which reasons were discussed in Bryan Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter - the point of the book being that the reasons tend to be irrational. The result is a phenomenon that is overall irrational, with occasional exceptions.

Granted, it might not be much of an improvement if voters had to add an explanation, since humans are nothing if not fantastic rationalizers.

(#) I say I think, because since the voting is silent and anonymous, no one but the voters can actually know, so anyone else is forced to come up with a hypothesis which fits the voting pattern.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 23 March 2011 05:30:26AM 0 points [-]

Also, while a negative score may not prevent a comment from being viewed, it will have status repercussions on the author, as readers make note of it. The tendency will be for readers to pay less attention to comments by that user.

I'm fairly sure that that's not the same thing as censorship.

(Or does 'censorious' refer to censure, rather than censorship? I probably should have looked that up before I used it, rather than assuming that Constant was staying on topic...)

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 05:54:32AM * 3 points [-]

Censorious means harshly critical, disapproving.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 23 March 2011 06:03:01AM 1 point [-]

Oops.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 06:09:45AM 0 points [-]

I couldn't help but notice that you wanted to share blame with me:

rather than assuming that Constant was staying on topic...

Do you mean that seriously? Do you want to have a discussion about what the topic was and whether I stayed on it? I'm not really inclined to, but here you've blamed something on me.

continue this thread »

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 04:53:15AM 0 points [-]

A specific comment has to get multiple downvotes on its own merits to be hidden

This very thread on karma is now hidden, including your own comment, because my comment upthread reached -3.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 23 March 2011 05:08:43AM * 4 points [-]

The comments are hidden in the original post's comments section, yes - but they're not hidden on our user pages, or on the recent comments page, and the latter is a major component of how many of the more active users keep track of conversations. (It's where I'm typing this very reply!) They also increment the "(N children)" note for the hidden-comment marker, which I expect makes people more likely to click and see what's being discussed.

Ironically enough, the conversation is also long enough that even with the option to have downvoted comments hidden turned off, one has to click on a link to "continue this thread »". This takes exactly as much effort as clicking on a link to unhide a comment, and the interface doesn't even encourage the user to do so by letting them know that there are a significant number of comments left to read. Is this also censorship?

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 05:25:34AM 0 points [-]

Is this also censorship?

What? What's your context for asking me that rhetorical question? My problem in this thread was with a good, solid comment that made a good point (written by Vladimir M) getting downvoted. I didn't say he was censored. I simply pointed out that he got a downvote for a bad reason and I suggested a possible fix.

Elsewhere I mentioned that in hacker news I had been permanently frozen out because of my first comment being downvoted. But that was to answer folks who were criticizing my decision to delete my own comment. I explained the history of my concern.

I'm not sure how your question applies to any of this.

Comment author: Perplexed 23 March 2011 04:45:59AM 4 points [-]

Someone who is overly censorious in the real world loses social capital, and I think that is a very good thing.

Someone who is insufficiently censorious also loses social capital, in almost all societies throughout history. The notion that it is best to be maximally nonjudgmental is a recent idea which is not particularly prevalent outside the urban West. And not a particularly good idea either.

As regards the received view within this community on use of downvoting to express disapproval, you'd better read this.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 05:40:13AM 1 point [-]

The notion that it is best to be maximally nonjudgmental is a recent idea

I am not in any way shape or form pushing this idea. It is a straw man. What I suggested was an adjustment to the current system which brings it more into line with how the real world works. The real world is not pacifist. It is not nonjudgmental. And those who enforce good behavior pay a price, because freedom is not free. That is what I am using as a model, and not a maximally nonjudgmental system.

The real world is ruled by economics, by every action having a certain cost. It is the cost of action which causes us to choose wisely what we do. I am suggesting tweaking the economics of karma, because I think it could stand to be improved.

Comment author: Perplexed 23 March 2011 04:15:33PM 2 points [-]

The real world is ruled by economics, by every action having a certain cost.

Yes, all actions have a cost (though, of course, not necessarily a net cost). But your suggested fix - penalizing a downvoter two whole karma points - attaches no corresponding penalty to upvoting. Why not?

If you had suggested something more balanced that penalized both up- and down-votes, then I might not have jumped in to chide you for 'pacifism'. And if your proposal had also made upvoting and downvoting of top-level articles particularly expensive, then I might have supported you.

Comment author: [deleted] comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 23 March 2011 07:43:18AM 1 point [-]

Does anyone keep track of whether other people downvote?

Comment author: Perplexed 23 March 2011 03:56:15PM 0 points [-]

As far as I know, no one can keep track ... which fact pretty much destroys my implicit argument regarding a socially enforced duty to be an enforcer. At least as it applies to downvoting. Thx for bringing me back to reality.

Comment author: rabidchicken 23 March 2011 04:03:54AM 2 points [-]

Does karma even matter once you have enough to not get silenced instantly? It is more a measure of experience with the site than intelligence. I cannot think of a short series of comments i could make that would drain all of my karma at this point, which would not get me banned even if I had several thousand.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2011 04:15:34AM 1 point [-]

I think that karma could potentially be more useful as an assessment of the quality of a post if it were assigned more judiciously than it is currently on just about any karma based site. It might be possible to refine the karma system to improve it. It does not seem to me that the possibilities have really been explored. Currently, karma tends to enforce groupthink on most sites. On digg and reddit, I see massive groupthink. Both sites have become useless to me - they've become a mix of self congratulation, juvenile humor, and predictable politics. I remember when they found interesting stuff on the web.

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