handoflixue comments on Suffering as attention-allocational conflict - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 18 May 2011 03:12PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (61)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 May 2011 04:55:21AM 5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: handoflixue 20 May 2011 08:48:20PM 2 points [-]

nods If it's someone whose name I recognize and whose opinion I value, that tends to get handled similar to an "expert's intuitive evaluation". I don't know how tight-knit the community is here, and what percentage of "I disagree" messages end up triggering that here, but most communities I've seen aren't tight-knit enough for it to be meaningful except possibly when said by a "tribal leader".

You do make a good point about the acceptability of "I disagree" influencing the acceptability of "I disagree because of this brief reason" :)