Vaniver comments on The Power of Reinforcement - Less Wrong

96 Post author: lukeprog 21 June 2012 01:42PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 22 June 2012 05:32:19AM 7 points [-]

never comment on bad posts or explain my downvote on LW

This is not quite justified; this is a post on how to use positive reinforcement, not how to use punishment.

Comment author: shminux 22 June 2012 06:02:39AM 1 point [-]

When a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer doesn't respond in any way.

(from the link)

Comment author: Vaniver 22 June 2012 06:30:12AM 3 points [-]

Dolphins are more difficult to punish usefully than humans; for one, they're less likely to understand English.

Moving to object-level advice: I agree that not responding to bad comments or posts is generally a good idea. I think that responding to downvote explanation requests is a good idea about half of the time. Unsolicited downvote explanation is typically done to sway bystander opinion as well as inform the poster, and so deserves its own treatment.