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Vladimir_M comments on Meta: Karma and lesswrong mainstream positions - Less Wrong
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Comments (43)
My impression is that there are a few issues where contrarian positions will tick people off and result in undeserved downvotes unless they're extremely well written and argued. There is also a somewhat larger set of issues where posts and comments will get upvoted heavily, and sometimes stratospherically, despite being pure applause lights. However, as someone who has written many comments of varying quality criticizing various positions that are prevalent on LW, I can say that as long as they don't touch any of the few third rails, contrarian comments overwhelmingly end up with non-negative scores even if they're less than stellar.
When it comes to posts downvoted to -1, and sometimes also -2, one confounding issue are the passive-aggressive downvotes of frustrated participants in the discussion. (Scores below -2 usually indicate a wider range of downvoters.) These typically get reversed by other readers, but sometimes nobody sees it or cares enough.
On the whole, I think the present system works as well as could be reasonably expected. The only change I'd like to see is separate tracking of upvotes and downvotes, so that controversial comments would stand apart from those that are just plain uninteresting.
I would like that too...also for top-level posts, it would be nice to know.
Really? There are currently four discussion posts on Bayesian Epistemology versus Popper:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/54u/bayesian_epistemology_vs_popper/ http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/551/popperian_decision_making/ http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/552/reply_to_benelliott_about_popper_issues/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ox/bayesianism_versus_critical_rationalism/
These posts have attracted close to six hundred comments between them, yet the first three remain at around 0 to -1 and the last one at 4. The first three posts where written by curi, a Popperian critical of Bayesianism, who has also contributed a large number of quality comments, and probably many more comments than anyone else on LW during the same time period. So you've got this high quality commenter who has the skills to write a lot of good stuff very quickly and who is generating interest but who has fairly dismal kharma. Explain.
Personally, I don't think the votes are anything people should care about.
Upvotes signal "I would like to see more like this," and downvotes signal "I would like to see less like this." Curi was upvoted to start with for raising some ideas not in common circulation here, and for making some claims of poor scholarship on Eliezer's part (absent extenuating factors, we tend to upvotes comments which promote improved scholarship.) He began to be downvoted as other posters began to become frustrated with his double standards of scholarly expectations, poorly founded arguments, and failure to follow through on requests for information that would convince us to take further interest in Popper. The downvotes indicate that other posters no longer feel that he is participating according to standards we consider appropriate.
Criticism of the ideas that are mainstream here always generates activity, and the reception is positive when the conduct is positive, and negative when the conduct is negative.
My tentative explanation is that it's not actually generating as much interest as you suggest.
Rather, there are a small number of people generating a vast number of comments that don't seem to generate any useful progress, and thus don't garner much karma.
Admittedly I'm mostly generalizing from my own experience here... that kind of volume: content ratio is not something I want to see more of (and is, indeed, something I'd like to see less of), and the low karma scores seem consistent with the idea that other people are like me in this respect.
That said, I could be wrong... it may be that lots of other people find that dialog worthwhile, that I'm the exception, and that the karma scores have some other explanation I haven't thought of.
To the extent (A) that votes on X's comments/posts reflect other people's desire to have stuff like those comments/posts on this site, and to the extent (B) that X cares about other people's desires, X should care about votes.
Of course, extent A is difficult to determine with confidence, and extent B is a consequence of X's values. For myself, I estimate A to be fairly high, and B is pretty high for me, so I care about votes and I think I should care about them.
I've obtained a delta of about +100 karma in this discussion. So this explanation seems wrong.
Fair enough... if that's coming from a small number of highly-ranked comments, that is indeed evidence that a lot of people are interested in the exchange. (If it's a large number of low-ranked comments, it's equally consistent with a small number of people who endorse your engagement in it.)
Thanks for the counterargument.
That seems like an accurate assessment. At present this comment http://lesswrong.com/lw/54u/bayesian_epistemology_vs_popper/3uqx is at +8 and this comment http://lesswrong.com/lw/54u/bayesian_epistemology_vs_popper/3usd is at +13 but the second comment also got linked to in a separate thread. No other comment of mine in that discussion has upvoted to more than 5. That data combined with your remark above suggests that your initial remark was correct.
You are making potentially unsubstantiated assumptions here. Note for example that curi at one point asserted that he didn't want to read up on Bayesianism because he'd find it boring but the fact that he had read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality should help. Curi's comments have been of highly variable quality.
It does help create familiarity with the culture. I have of course also read up on Bayesianism. I specifically said I wasn't interested in the sequences. I read stuff from Eliezer before they existed. I see no need to read more of the same. Be more careful not to misquote.
Note that I just read an academic paper on Bayesianism. And before that I read from the Jaynes' book. I ordered two books from the library on recommendations. So obviously I will read up on Bayesianism in some ways.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/54u/bayesian_epistemology_vs_popper/3vew
I don't know how this is a misquote. You didn't know the details of Cox's theorem (it wasn't even clear you were familiar with the theorem).
I said:
You then replied:
Neither of us made any mention of the sequences (which in any event wouldn't be great reading for this purpose- very little of them actually has to do with Bayesianism directly.)
Your link showing that you read an academic paper on Bayesianism occurs 30 hours after your above comment. Even if you were trying specifically to understand the culture of LW (not something stated in your earlier remark) reading HPMR is an awful way of going about it. So I don't understand your point at all.
In any event, whether or not you intended to mean something else isn't terrible relevant to the point I was trying to make: comments which try to include reading incomplete Harry Potter fanfic as legitimate evidence of having done one's research are not high quality remarks and seriously undermine your credibility.
Many people are motivated to comment to critique posts that they see as low quality. In contrast, a post that covers most issues it raises well may leave little room for comment.