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David_Gerard comments on How can we get more and better LW contrarians? - Less Wrong
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I think you're wrong there. Humans are exquisitely sensitive to status, anywhere they see anything that looks even slightly like it. Upvotes/downvotes are precisely rewards/punishments, whatever else they may be or whatever you may intend yours to be.
Other people can torture themselves with such phantoms or not, as they please.
"as they please" is, I think, wrong too. It's incredibly difficult to switch off awareness of status. Particularly with your score on the LessWrong video game right up there at the top-right in a little green oval, with your this-month score just below it.
I'm not talking about how easy or difficult it is.
"as they please" seems dismissive of how difficult it is. It's that basic to human nature, not just human thinking.
Of course, you may be able to lessen how much you care about your score on the LessWrong game to the point where it doesn't affect you more than epsilon, but assuming you're a human I would be very surprised to find you literally didn't have even the faintest twinge.
"Difficult" too easily becomes an excuse for not doing the work. How "difficult" is it to get a university degree? How "difficult" is it to bike 100 miles?
Sometimes "difficult" just means "I don't want to".
So I see I'm currently at -3 for my two comments above, which I think may be the first time I have ever commented on the votes on my own posts. My reaction: so what? I am sufficiently self-assured (a virtue worth cultivating, and observing one's reaction to one's karma score is one small way of cultivating it) that I draw from it neither validation nor shame, and besides, a trifling few points here and there are nothing. Comments are a more substantial currency.
The dogs bark. The caravan moves on.
Also relevant.