pragmatist comments on Self-serving meta: Whoever keeps block-downvoting me, is there some way to negotiate peace? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: ialdabaoth 16 November 2013 04:35AM

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Comment author: pragmatist 19 November 2013 08:30:21PM *  0 points [-]

Sense 1 and Sense 2 can't be reliably distinguished from the outside.

I disagree. There may be specific cases where they are difficult to distinguish, but I think in general it is not so hard to reliably distinguish them. In this particular case, based on the model I've formed of ialdabaoth from reading a number of his comments, based on the specific arguments he has offered, and based on what others are saying, I'd assign sense 1 a considerably higher probability than sense 2, and I'm quite confident in this distinction. I would be very surprised if it turned out ialdabaoth was falsely accusing Eugine simply to cause him trouble.

Complain all you wish for all I care, but if you wish to handle the situation, do it by changing the system, not by taking justice in your own hands.

Introducing a norm of naming names is a mechanism for changing the system. It might be a change to the system that does more harm than good, but that is an empirical question, and one on which I suspect you are wrong. Labeling it as "taking justice in your own hands", and contrasting it with "changing the system", just seems like well-poisoning, a rhetorical maneuver to sidestep discussion on whether "complaining and naming) is in fact a more effective way of changing the system than thinking up and trying to implement some software solution. Here I mean "effective" not just in terms of the probability of a strategy working, but the probability of the strategy being fully implemented in the first place.

Comment author: hyporational 24 November 2013 06:39:41AM *  1 point [-]

I would be very surprised if it turned out ialdabaoth was falsely accusing Eugine simply to cause him trouble.

I don't doubt he has some evidence for Eugine being the culprit. That doesn't mean he didn't name him to cause him trouble, in fact it's probably why he did so. I suppose Sense 1 and 2 don't cover all the possibilities then.

Introducing a norm of naming names is a mechanism for changing the system.

Would you call street justice a system? Do you think the press should publish the names of all people accused of a crime? Do you like the idea of being wrongly named? This is not well poisoning, but trying to establish whether it works anywhere else. You're expecting quite a lot from lesswrongians here.

Eugine's karma ratio for the past month has dropped from 75 % to 52 % after he was named. What do you think of that?