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Konkvistador comments on Open Thread, June 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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A user who's judgement I deeply admire has told me off site that my posts are harmful to the community and it is better that I stop posting. I will respect his opinion and discontinue posting until further notice.
Please down vote this post if I make responses after it.
Thanks for all the fun and cool conversation! It was a great ride while it lasted, I will try to live up to the spirit of LW in the future.
First Checkpoint
I delayed the break from LW because of some of the feedback to this post as well as plain force of habit. I did some posts I considered clearly valuable to the community. As of August 8th, its been exactly a month since my last entry, I don't think much has changed so far so I'm going to stick it out until the next check point which will be at the 3 month mark.
Second Checkpoint
The breaks I took where somewhat useful. Currently resuming normal participation.
You should note this on a calendar or something: two months from now you should re-evaluate your position. It seems to me like there's a chance you'll change to the point you're net positive; re-evaluation is cheap; that small chance should be allowed for, not discarded.
This sounds like a good idea. I will do so.
Slowing down is called-for, stopping is not. You're a valued member of the community.
I'm sorry to see you go.
I do agree with gwern that your recent critical lamentations have been a negative contribution. Particularly because I find it is too easy to be influenced towards cynicism. However your recent dissatisfaction aside your contributions in general are fine, making you a valuable community member. I never see the name "Konkvistador" and think "Oh damn, that moron is commenting again", which puts you ahead of rather a lot of people and almost constitutes high praise!
I can perhaps empathise with becoming disgruntled with intellectual standards on lesswrong. People are stupid and the world is mad - including most people here and everywhere else I have interacted with humans. I recently took a whole 30 days off, getting my score down to '0', weakening the addiction and also relieving a lot of frustration. I enjoy lesswrong much more after doing that. Hopefully you decide to return some time in the future as well.
Honestly, I think you were too easily mollified by lukeprog - for the reasons I said to him there.
I tend to agree with Shokwave's replay. Lesswrong users not learning a bunch of history is not a big deal. The subject is fairly boring. Someone else can learn it.
Lesswrong isn't supposed to be a site where all users must learn arbitrary amounts of information about arbitrary subjects. Most people have better things to do.
Please don't go. If someone from my cluster of ideaspace told you that you detracted from the community - they are wrong.
I find your style of commenting both fun to read and interesting. I think your posts are valuable even if they're more "thinking out loud" than "I have studied ALL THE LITERATURE". As a community I think we can and SHOULD be able to talk about things in ways that don't involve 50 citations at the bottom of the page, even though I think those posts are valuable. I don't know who you're scaring away with your amount of commenting, but I don't miss them.
Jeez.
You've been the top contributor in the past 30 days.
This departure of yours is the most harmful thing you've ever done to the community. I wish you'd stay.
This is bloody stupid.
If that's the reason someone asked Konkvistador to leave, then someone deserves less respect than given by Konkvistador. Much less respect.
Yes.
Yes; his criticism was trivially wrong, as could be seen just by looking at posts systematically.
Actually, I laid out exactly what was wrong with the post: it was a good idea which hadn't been developed anywhere to the extent that it would be worth reading or referring back to, and I gave pointers to the literature he could use to develop it.
The reason I told Konk that his contributions were slightly net negative - when he specifically asked for my opinion on the matter - was exactly what Vladimir_Nesov guessed: he was flinging around and contributing all sorts of things, and just generally increasing the noise to signal ratio. I suggested he simply develop his ideas better and post less; Konk was the one who decided that he should leave/take a long break, saying that he had a lot of academic work coming up as well.
I'm not convinced his criticism is wrong. Lukeprog listed lots of substantive recent articles, but I question whether they were progress, given the current state of the community (for example, I'd like more historical analysis a la James Q Wilson)
Given the karma, it appears that the community is not convinced the criticism is wrong. Even if Konkvistador is wrong, he isn't trivially wrong.
I think you're shifting goalposts. 'Progress', whatever that is, is different from being insular, and ironically enough, genuine progress can be taken as insularity. (For example, Rational Wiki mocks LW for being so into TDT/UDT/*DT which don't yet have proper academic credentials and insinuates they represent irrational cult-like markers, even though those are some of the few topics I think LW has made clear-cut progress on!)
I don't like to appeal to karma. Karma is changeable, does change, and should change as time passes, the karma at any point being only a provisional estimate: I have, here and on Reddit, on occasion flipped a well-upvoted (or downvoted) comment to the other sign by a well-reasoned or researched rebuttal to some comment that is flat-out wrong.
Perhaps people simply hadn't looked at the list of recent posts to notice that the basic claim of insularity was obviously wrong, or perhaps they were being generous and like you, read him as claiming something more interesting or subtle or not so obviously wrong like 'LW is not working on non-LW material enough'.
Fair enough about karma. But first sentence of Konkvistador's post (after the rhetorical question) says:
And the second paragraph of the post begins:
That looks a lot like saying, "LW is not working on non-LW material enough"
Well, look through the examples, or heck, posts since then. Do you see people refusing to update? 'No, I refuse to believe the Greeks could have good empirical grounds for rejecting heliocentrism! I defy your data! And ditto for the possibility Glenn Beck wrote anything flattering to our beliefs!'
What I mean is that certain methodological approaches are heavily disfavored. Slightly longer version of my point here.
Edit: And who is moving the goalposts now? You said "position X" is not trivially wrong. I said, "Here's an example of Konkvistador articulating position X."
Since history is so often employed for political purposes ("It is a principle that shines impartially on the just and unjust that once you have a point of view, all history will back you up"), it's not surprising we don't discuss it much. If, even with this disfavoring, people still think posts like http://lesswrong.com/lw/cuk/progress/ are worth posting and inspiring pseudohistory like this - then this is not a disfavoring I can disfavor.
Not that excluding one area is much evidence of insularity. If one declares one will eat only non-apples, is one an insular and picky eater?
I absolutely agree that history is filled with politically motivated bias. But there are actual historical facts (someone won the Siege of Vienna of 1529, and it wasn't the Ottoman Empire). There are historical theories that actually fit most of the facts and pseudo-historical theories that fit carefully selected sets of facts. Being able to tell the difference is a valuable skill that members of this community should try to develop.
To put it differently, the falsity of the theory of moral progress has implications for assessing the difficulty of building a Friendly AI, doesn't it?
Apologies for the harsh language gwern. I shouldn't have used it. I will edit and retract to correct that.
I didn't think so. Neither did the many posters who publicly endorsed the post.
Also Lukeprog thought the article you found so clearly deficient worthy of inclusion on his productivity list. Either you are wrong and his article isn't crap. Or Luke's standards on what counts as productivity are too low in which case your argument on this criticism of his notion that we aren't making proper progress is that much weaker.
Also we have different styles of writing. Have you noticed how people are getting bored of Main? Guess what maybe that's because its becoming a wannabe Academic ghetto dominate with only your style where new posters don't dare contribute.
it may seem natural to a natural systematizing archiving outlier like you to spend a whole lot of time on your stuff polishing it to perfection, but all this will result in is a whole bunch of a small bag of boring posts of uniformly decent but not extraordinary quality. Isn't it funny that nearly any old Eliezer sequence post dosen't live up to such citation heavy, research made explicit standards you set? Such an article would be upvoted by the common poster make no mistake, but l33t busybodies like you would home in on the technicalities.
First of the community obviously disagrees aside from positive comments on his contributions that I could dig up, he has received more karma in the past 30 days than any other single poster and ~7k overall isn't bad at all. And no this wasn't due to mass spamming. His average post has like 5 karma or something. Fracking Nerdling on a stick he's even currently like 50 points ahead of Eliezer HPMOR Yudkowsky who descended down from his throne to write an article answering criticism threatening his funding.
If Konkvistador flat out asked you if it would be overall better than the current situation to stop posting at all, and you responded with a yes, then you either lack a social brain, because the right answer is not "yes" but "no, but you should work harder on improving." especially since he apparently hero worships you.
Have you heard about "saving face"? There is probably an added language and cultural barrier, misunderstandings are common even with those superficially well versed in English.
Also you dark artsily referring to him as "Konk" with faux affection to manipulate the crowd dosen't impress me.
Edit:
2nd Edit: Toned it down.
I read your comment, and I downvoted you because it was rude towards gwern, calling him a "damn robot". And I'm one of the guys that urged Konkvistador to stay, in a comment above. That doesn't excuse your rudeness. So you get properly downvoted by me (and gwern got upvoted because I like that he spoke up and declared he was the "top poster" in question and also gave a clear explanation of his reasons).
That konkvistador gave gwern's criticism more weight than he should isn't gwern's fault, it's konkvistador's.
I guess you are right ok I'll edit away the "damn robot" part. My points however haven't been addressed.
Yeah, maybe. Other possibilities include being ironic: if he objects to his inclusion on the list...
People are getting bored of Main because the best contributors like Yvain or Eliezer have other things to do, and the standard topics are hard to go over again without either repetition or going into depth beyond most readers. It happens: wells run dry or the material becomes too advanced. And everyone else isn't stepping up the plate. So, things become less interesting.
I don't criticize the posts because Eliezer uses cites all the time in the sequences, and where he isn't, I often know the citations anyway from past discussions on SL4, standard transhumanist reading materials, the old SIAI Bookshelf, book & paper recommendations, etc.
I'm glad that you were able to explain why I and other chatters in
#lesswrongsometimes called him by that shortcut: we were just manipulating the IRC crowd.Good grief. Maybe I should just put up IRC logs for the past few days so people can see for themselves what was said...
That's not very nice. Apparently LW is big on being nice. See I'm learning.
This is the first time I heard about this conversation occurring on IRC. Ok so I'm assuming Konk is a nick people use for him over there. But why use it on LW in this context? Come now, you where trying to communicate "oh look I'm socially near to him".
You aren't always the intended audience. Criticism from the perspective of those unfamiliar with Yudkwosky's arguments are more valuable don't you agree? The point of the sequences is to bring people up to speed.
It's both clever and a dilemma which teaches a relevant point; it may not be nice, but that doesn't matter.
Does it matter that it was IRC as opposed to a separate forum website? If it does matter, then perhaps you were jumping to conclusions in interpreting 'off-site'...
Sure. But that's by definition criticism I am unable to give and an audience I am not in. Am I to be blamed for preferring the material I learn more from?
I have no expectations at all. But I believe that your stated goals closely match your actual goals - and swearing doesn't advance your stated goals.
Ok this didn't work. Please down vote parent and this comment to punish me for posting.
Edit: Ok who up voted this. Not funny. :/
I don't downvote on request (for reasons I have occasionally expressed I consider that self control strategy to be poor).
Go edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts or /etc/hosts to point lesswrong to 127.0.0.1. Works for me. In fact, whenever I get the slightest impulse to go look at lesswrong I deliberately and actively type in lesswrong.com, anticipating somewhat eagerly the Server Not Found message and giving myself a mental reward. This was amazingly effective in achieving extinction in an excessively reinforced behavioral pattern.
This is useful advice. Thank you.
Konkvistador,
For some of us, your behavior looks like evaporative cooling from the inside. For those of us who don't want cooling, this is not a good thing.
But I respect you too much to upvote something you don't want upvoted.
It's somewhat plausible that 20 comments a day may be too much (in someone's perception), or that it's better to develop certain kinds of posts more carefully, maybe even to avoid certain topics (that would shift the focus of conversations on LW in an undesirable direction), but it's not a case for not posting at all.
(That is, the questions of whether Konkvistador's posts are slightly harmful for the community (in what specific way) and whether the best intervention in response to that hypothetical is to discontinue posting entirely don't seem to me clearly resolved, and low rate of posting seems like a better alternative for the time being, absent other considerations.)
I generally love his 20 comments a day.
It is ridiculous to argue that an eloquent and prolific poster who actually seems to have read the motherfucking sequences and doesn't get tired of trying help new people access them (a rare trait these days) is causing harm.
Even if that was so for every single thing he wrote, and note that when Lukeprog cites against his argument that productivity and openness to outside ideas on LW is lower than it should be, the bundle includes many of Konkvistador's posts as examples of openness and productivity! Imagine that!
At the very least his excellent taste in outside links that he regularly shares with the community make him definitely a signal not a noise man.
But please lets pile on him. I bet soon someone will bring up how he "violated the mindkilling" taboo or even acusse him of getting "minkilled".
Your rhetoric is for dismissing the question as ridiculous. I suggest actually considering the question, and expect that the answer accepted by Konkvistador is wrong on both levels (their contributions don't seem harmful on net, there are multiple meanings of "harmful" that should be addressed separately with different interventions, and stopping participation entirely doesn't seem to be the best response to the hypothetical of their contributions being harmful in some of these senses).
(For example, it's likely that for most posters, there is some aspect of their participation that is harmful, and the appropriate response is to figure out what that aspect is and fix it. So it's useful to consider these questions.)
My rhetoric is what it is, I'm pissed. Feel free to make an argument for why Konkvistador's output is on net "harmful", I will try to consider it properly.
Though naturally we are left at a disadvantage here, since we will likely only ever hear one side of the story. The man himself has probably already scrambled his password or something and won't be putting up a defence.
This is not my argument, please re-read the discussion when you calm down.
I'm not sure why Gwern's and Nesov's replies are being downvoted to the point that they are hidden. Surely there is disagreement, but I see the quality of their posts as high. I urge voters to vote on the quality of the posts, not whether you agree/disagree with them.
But even if I'm wrong in this case, it seems obvious we have a split community on this.
I'm better the subconscious parts of the brains of the "Top Poster" Clique are running their little hamster wheels trying to find clever reasons why to associate with the high status gwern rather than low status absent underdog.
Two points:
I don't know what's going on inside your head, but this looks like motivated cognition from the outside.
Regardless of why you are saying this, it doesn't help change the community norm in the direct that you seem to want.
I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.
I'm on a quest.
I'm not sure there is any hope for this community. But ok you seem reasonable, I'll quit and let the conformist contrarian wolves tear K's corpse.
Quitting doesn't advance your goals either. If your goal isn't posturing for your own emotional satisfaction, stop doing posturing and do some real work. Do the impossible and try to actually convince the community that gwern's advice was bad.
Gwern is wrong. Its that simple.
edit Corrected typo.
2nd edit Haters gonna hate. I'd love to hear some actual arguments though clique men. So predictable on LW someone bitches about karma and you insta up vote him and downvote the opponent. In a prisoners dilemma with the options of defect or cooperate, LWers always pick CONTRARIAN.
Gwern is being flippant, but what's wrong with Nesov's statements.
Yeah I guess I can agree.
I originally misread him. He apparently dosen't think K's been on net "hurting" the community. I've edited my posts to reflect this. So apologies to Nesov.
In my opinion this kind of undefensive humility is something to be celebrated. Good job, Konk!