common_law comments on Being Half-Rational About Pascal's Wager is Even Worse - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 April 2013 05:20AM

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Comment author: common_law 22 April 2013 01:53:44AM 0 points [-]

Now there's an excellent example of rationality failure: I'm not Dmytry. Check my profile and my blogs.

Comment author: lukeprog 22 April 2013 02:07:54AM 6 points [-]

Oh wait, you're that other person with a bunch of different monikers: metaphysicist, srdiamond, etc. Sorry.

Comment author: wedrifid 22 April 2013 02:19:50AM 3 points [-]

Oh wait, you're that other person with a bunch of different monikers: metaphysicist, srdiamond, etc. Sorry.

There is another (known) sockpuppet abuser that I need to downvote? Bother. I thought we just had the one.

Comment author: common_law comment score below threshold [+] (10 children)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 24 April 2013 10:11:09AM * 4 points [-]

If one identity goes down in flames after a particularly unpopular posting, it doesn't exhaust my "karma" capital.

One purpose of (significantly) negative (total) Karma is to indicate when a user should be kicked out. Limiting this damage damages the forum. ("A particularly unpopular posting" is not normally the issue, it's usually the systematic failure to respond to negative feedback, including by stopping to post in particular modes or at all.)

Comment author: troll 24 April 2013 04:17:29PM * 0 points [-]

Some people might downvote everything another has ever said out of spite.

Some might gather a group of friends to downvote a comment they don't like.

It's like giving everyone a double vote.

We don't kick people out of real life for disagreeing with us. (some do but no)

Users should never be kicked out. Downvotes shouldn't exist. Baring extreme scenarios, a system of upvotes should sort everything out.

(hesitantly) And total karma shouldn't exist. You should feel good for making a good comment, but not for making good comments in the past.

Comment author: drethelin 24 April 2013 04:44:20PM 1 point [-]

Spite exists, and people do things out of spite. That doesn't mean punishment shouldn't exist. If you don't stop being friends with anyone ever you will be abused and used and forced to spend time with awful people.

Total karma isn't for you, it's for everyone else.

Comment author: common_law 24 April 2013 07:03:09PM * 1 point [-]

Total karma isn't for you, it's for everyone else.

Producing correlated rather than independent judgments of post quality, with the well-known cascading effects. The "system" deliberately introduces what I call belief-opinion confusion

Comment author: mwengler 24 April 2013 05:08:15PM 1 point [-]

Intentionally or not you just described the karma system at fool.com (which they call recommendations). As a long time poster there it does have its uses: there are some extremely prolix boards where I skip through reading only the high rec posts, and don't have to worry about being "shielded" from controversial ideas like you get with the system here.

If i were putting someone else's karma system in here, I would put in stackexchange.com They have downvoting, but it costs the downvoter karma. So you don't get things mindlessly downvoted just because they don't kowtow. But actual low quality stuff is downvoted by high-karma individuals.

The recent improvement of showing pctage of downvotes here is nice. I think I would go the last step and "decorate" the up and down vote buttons with the total number of existing up and down votes. This would also be slightly more compact than the current system where I have points reported on top of comment, and then uninformative buttons below the post. And I would by scanning upvote totals be able to use recs in the way you want them used, if I wanted to ignore downvotes.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 25 April 2013 10:35:37AM 0 points [-]

Users should never be kicked out. Downvotes shouldn't exist.

The issues you are raising have been thoroughly aired here in the past. It isn't helpful to barge in and propose rearranging the furniture just because you don't see why it is the way it is. For some of the background I suggest this posting. There is certainly room for useful discussion of how LessWrong should be run, but it has to start from where it is.

Baring extreme scenarios, a system of upvotes should sort everything out.

Right.

Which meaning of "should" is that?

Now. I've written the above on the hypothesis that you are not exactly what you call yourself, a troll. But the evidence is not favourable. You pre-emptively shot yourself in the foot by choosing that handle, posted a bio consisting of a list of what are hurrah keywords on LessWrong, accumulated some karma with innocuous postings, then started posting stuff that instantly gets downvoted out of sight.

If you are genuine, you need to change something. That is not something that I will say twice.

Comment author: drethelin 24 April 2013 04:47:02PM 0 points [-]

For example: I've made posts and comments that get massively downvoted but I have 2500 karma so I don't get kicked out.

Comment author: bogus 24 April 2013 07:59:07PM * 0 points [-]

One purpose of (significantly) negative (total) Karma is to indicate when a user should be kicked out.

I disagree, total karma should never be the sole indicator of whether a user should be kicked out. If a user is being obnoxious enough that kicking her out becomes a possibility, this will be quite evident from a cursory look at her post and comment log. I'm thinking of a LW user who would make a perfect example of this, except that I just can't recall his or her name. Monkey(something), IIRC.

Total karma does have some useful technical effects, such as (AIUI) disabling downvotes and rate-limiting posts and comments.

Comment author: wedrifid 24 April 2013 02:37:44AM 3 points [-]

Doesn't sockpuppetry occur when one poster uses another identity for deceitful purposes, usually to exaggerate his support or denigrate the quality of opposition?

Yes. That is precisely what we are talking about. You may argue that once the identities have been identified and can no longer be used simultaneously in the same conversation they are no longer technically sockpuppets. But that distinction doesn't seem terribly important.

There are prudential reasons for having multiple identities. It's like the protection of incorporation: it limits damage. If one identity goes down in flames after a particularly unpopular posting, it doesn't exhaust my "karma" capital.

Yes. There are incentives for using multiple accounts (whether for sock-puppetry, karma assassination or otherwise). I prefer the case where such practice is sufficiently discouraged that any perpetrators must at least go to the effort of acting differently---maybe by having different pet issues that they rant about rather than the same battle and same arguments with a different moniker.

Comment author: TimS 24 April 2013 02:11:01AM 0 points [-]

There's no rule against multiple accounts (AFAIK), but there is a local social norm against multiple accounts. Some folks even dislike Clippy, who I find hilarious.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 April 2013 11:35:28AM 1 point [-]

The user formerly known as Dmytry now posts as private_messaging, IIRC. (“The one” would be Newsome, right?)

Comment author: wedrifid 22 April 2013 12:13:29PM 0 points [-]

The user formerly known as Dmytry now posts as private_messaging, IIRC.

Among others. Someone made a list of them at one point.

(“The one” would be Newsome, right?)

I was thinking of Dmytry et al.

Comment author: common_law 24 April 2013 06:16:16PM * -2 points [-]

To Vladimir Nesov:

"A particularly unpopular posting" is not normally the issue, it's usually the systematic failure to respond to negative feedback, including by stopping to post in particular modes or at all.

I'm sorry: what's a "particular mode"? And what does stopping to post altogether have to do with multiple identities?

More to the point, what is "responding to feedback"? Posting responses to disagreement? Surely you know that depresses "karma" further. Or is "responding to feedback" a euphemism for conforming one's opinion and conduct to the community?

Mr. Nesov, you want to be a scientist; why do you post in bureaucratese? Obfuscatory writing is both cause and symptom of wretched thinking.

Edit. Changed Nessov to Nesov.

Comment author: wedrifid 24 April 2013 07:05:56PM * 1 point [-]

To Vladimir Nessov:

Since I'm not Nesov I can only assume you are writing to me because of some argument you are having with someone else is in a trollblocked thread. I'm fairly sure Nesov has a button meant for just this kind of thing.

Comment author: Kawoomba comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: common_law 22 April 2013 06:23:31PM 1 point [-]

Apology accepted, but I think it's Dmytry to whom you actually owe it: he's the one you recklessly accused of deceitful self-promotion.

common_law comments on Being Half-Rational About Pascal's Wager is Even Worse - Less Wrong

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