With a few exceptions, whenever I explain my downvote I get silently downvoted with no obvious benefit to whomever I was replying to.
I often find explanations-for-downvotes useful. If they're coming from the SAME person, I'm likely to still disagree with them, and thus downvote them again (this is rarely the case with third-party explanations). Days or weeks later I'll finally drop the tribal posturing, actually THINK about it, and sometimes update my stance. I'm MUCH more likely to update if I've engaged someone thoroughly (which will result in a thread of comments by them, all of them downvoted by me)
... I should probably stop negatively reinforcing this with downvotes >.<
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of June 25th. (Based on the rate of participation in prior threads, I thought it might be a good idea to start posting every other week instead of every week. Only so much new stuff happens in a week.) It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to everyone who contributes!
(Previously: 5/14/12, 5/21/12, 5/28/12, 6/4/12, 6/11/12)