RobertLumley comments on Rationality Quotes August 2012 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alejandro1 03 August 2012 03:33PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (426)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 August 2012 02:12:36PM *  5 points [-]

Am I the only one who is confused why this comment (currently at -3) has drifted to the top when sorted with the new "Best" algorithm? That seems to be either a mistake or a bad algorithm.

Comment author: harshhpareek 03 August 2012 04:27:40PM *  2 points [-]

Not necessarily a bad algorithm. This is possible if it uses your karma as a factor, which is in general not a bad idea (in this case countered by the collapsing negative scores thing)

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 August 2012 06:05:41PM -1 points [-]

I don't understand what you mean, specifically about "my karma" as a factor. Can you give an example? Do you mean whether or not I personally upvoted it? Or my personal karma score? I can't see how either would be particularly relevant. Regardless, if the former is what you meant, I have not voted on the original comment.

Comment author: DaFranker 03 August 2012 06:22:30PM 3 points [-]

He didn't mean your karma specifically, but Arbitrary Hypothetical Second-Person Comment-Poster X's karma.

For example, suppose E.Y. were to post, for whatever reason (cat jumping on keyboard?), a really pointless, flawed comment that everyone actually downvoted. If the algorithm takes into account the poster's total Karma in some proportional manner not implementing any diminutive return strategy, then E.Y.'s downvoted comment would still be at the top unless it received an amount of downvotes that seems almost impossible to obtain using only the current active LW readership.

Comment author: MichaelHoward 03 August 2012 09:10:19PM 2 points [-]

suppose E.Y. were to post, for whatever reason (cat jumping on keyboard?)...

This happened once (F12 was mapped to that set of keystrokes at the time).

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2012 12:34:55AM 1 point [-]

BTW, who was it who had a script to sort all the comments by a user by karma? wedrifid?

Comment author: Alicorn 04 August 2012 12:38:49AM *  6 points [-]

Wei Dai's thing will do that - click "points" at the top after loading the whole page.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2012 12:41:42AM 0 points [-]

Yes, it was that one I was thinking about. Thanks.

Comment author: DaFranker 03 August 2012 10:40:17PM 1 point [-]

Haha! Thanks, great example.

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 August 2012 06:31:26PM 1 point [-]

Ah. That makes sense. I don't know why that didn't occur to me. Regardless, I don't think it does, based on explanations here and here.

Comment author: DanielLC 10 August 2012 08:34:22PM 0 points [-]

I'd say that using it in a proportional manner not implementing any diminutive return strategy would be a mistake and a bad algorithm.

Comment author: thomblake 03 August 2012 08:10:05PM -1 points [-]

For example, suppose E.Y. were to post, for whatever reason (cat jumping on keyboard?), a really pointless, flawed comment that everyone actually downvoted...

Irrelevant in practice, since in that scenario the comment would be massively upvoted.

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 August 2012 08:15:59PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Dallas 03 August 2012 08:12:46PM 2 points [-]

Yudkowsky's been downvoted before; the most notable time in recent memory was probably removing the link to the NY Observer article.

Comment author: thomblake 03 August 2012 08:20:17PM 1 point [-]

I think I misread that comment as Eliezer posting a picture or video of a cat jumping on the keyboard.

Comment author: thomblake 03 August 2012 08:50:36PM 1 point [-]
Comment author: harshhpareek 03 August 2012 08:05:34PM *  1 point [-]

I meant lukeprog's karma, i.e. the poster of a comment influences how good the comment is.

Comment author: RobertLumley 03 August 2012 08:14:46PM 0 points [-]

DaFranker clarified this. Thanks.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2012 12:02:16AM 1 point [-]

I see negative-scored comments in http://lesswrong.com/topcomments/?t=day pretty often. Likewise, sometimes sorting comments by “Old” mis-sorts some of them (which is somewhat confusing when reading comments to old posts imported from Overcoming Bias).