wedrifid comments on Suffering as attention-allocational conflict - Less Wrong
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Comments (61)
I disagree. ;) Specifically because knowing who disagrees with me gives me way more evidence than just knowing that someone disagrees with me. Practically speaking I do not consider downvotes evidence that I am wrong (they are generally just evidence that people dislike what I say because it sounds pretentious or because it pattern matches to something that could be wrong), whereas I would consider a simple "I disagree" comment from e.g. Nick Tarleton some evidence that I was wrong and should spend effort finding out why. (This isn't mostly because Nick is a good thinker (though he is) but that I think it's a lot less likely he'll uncharitably misinterpret what I'm trying to say, whereas an "I disagree" comment from Vladimir Nesov is a lot less evidence that I'm wrong even though he is also an excellent thinker.)
Obviously "I disagree" plus a short reason is better and normally not much more difficult, but this would also be a lot easier to do in a community where just "I disagree" was acceptable.
Strongly agree on every point.
While downvotes always contain evidence that evidence contains more information about the social reality than the conceptual one. It is useful information, just not necessarily information about facts or accuracy.