MasterGrape comments on Aumann voting; or, How to vote when you're ignorant - Less Wrong

11 Post author: PhilGoetz 02 April 2009 06:54PM

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Comment author: MasterGrape 04 April 2009 08:22:17AM 4 points [-]

Is the problem here our inclination to interpret the number of points or karma as a rating in and of itself? As I understand it, that is just a tally of the upvotes and downvotes.

A 20 isn't four times as correct as a 5. It isn't even necessarily perceived as correct by four times as many people since the total number of votes might be larger for the 5 than for the 20.

So if we see a comment rated 20 and think it's more like a 5, we need to correct our thinking. Because this rating is not a 20/20 or some other percentage. The difference between 5 and 20 isn't necessarily qualitative. Does that make sense?

Comment author: [deleted] 28 October 2011 10:32:53PM 0 points [-]

Indeed. One of the things I don't like that much about the karma system is that I'd consider 5 upvotes and 0 downvotes to be better than 24 upvotes and 20 downvotes.