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MaoShan comments on Less Wrong Polls in Comments - Less Wrong
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Comments (302)
That is just an example of how polls can go horribly wrong, I have absolutely nothing against wedifrid and have no inside knowledge to his/her appearance or personal life.
In what way does the comment become worse by virtue of containing a poll? You could equally say "wedrifid is a misshapen troll with no friends".
No, the poll is actually less bad. You see, your comment proposes:
while the poll merely asserts
Wedrifid got off pretty lightly, from this perspective.
Because now we can tell him: "Wedrifid, you are misshapen. An appeal to popularity filtered through a false trichotomy says so."
Well, yes, but polls that are false trichotomies are a bad idea no matter whether they insult wedrifid or not. I expect LessWrong to be really good at noticing them, actually, so I don't think that's a problem.
Your confidence is inspiring, but I'd bet some false trichotomies are more obvious than others. (Though I can't immediately think of any examples of subtler false trichotomies to rattle off, so yeah)
An example of something that is NOT a false *otomoy would be the shorter list. (See other comment)
Since we can't verify that there is not an option we don't see (appeal to ignorance is the best we've got for this), every set of options is essentially a false *otomy.
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here.
K I'll try this: To make sure you are not presenting a false dichotomy, not only do you need to include all the options you know of, you also need to make sure you know all the options. How do you make sure there isn't an option you don't know?
Include "Other".
This time I know better than to interpret your text in a suspicious manner. Sorry for doing that to you in the other thread. FWIW, I liked your suggestion to play rationalist taboo once I understood that it was what you were suggesting. I have woken up to the fact that I interpreted your words suspiciously due to you expressing some unfriendliness toward me. This time, my perspective is that you probably intend to be constructive. I would like to understand what you mean by telling me to "include other" but I don't. To me, this is a cryptic message. The other one seemed cryptic at first also.
As a poll option, add "other" to whatever list you think of, and then you won't leave anything out. Maybe "Other - I'll explain in a comment" if you want to drive those respondents to tell you what you missed.
She's referring to unknown unknowns.
*she
Apologies. Will fix.
I personally think I came across as more of an asshole by presenting my insult in the form of a poll, but I can't think of a particular reason why that is.
Well, I consider forced-choice polls of that form a bit obnoxious, whether insulting or not, because I feel like I'm being tricked into saying something I don't believe. E.g., "My favorite pizza topping is: (a) pepperoni, (b) sausage, (c) mushroom" is an obnoxious poll, but is not insulting to anyone. That contributes somewhat. Had you added options that allowed for the possibility of your implicit assumptions being false (e.g., "none of the above", "I don't have a favorite pizza topping", etc.) that element would have been removed.
No, it's an example of how you went horribly wrong.
I don't find this a credible reading of your action.
As if I have a prior history of insulting wedifrid?
I apologize to anyone who took the poll seriously, and especially to wedifrid for happening to be the first comment along that line that I replied to.
I was only asking the community to realize ahead of time the potential pitfalls of this new feature.
Time will tell if it was worth losing some karma for my good intentions.