RichardKennaway comments on How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3 - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 September 2007 11:00PM

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Comment author: roland 22 June 2012 10:40:45PM 4 points [-]

Alicorn,

Good effort, you are almost there, if you used the explanation you gave above to Yaro he probably would be more enlightened than by "this is not the right website for you."

Quoting from The Power of Reinforcement:

The reason you should ignore poor performance if you say "No, you're doing it wrong!" you are inadvertently punishing the effort. A better response to a mistake would be to reinforce the effort: "Good effort! You're almost there! Try once more."

In spite of his comment being not in line, why not praise the effort, especially considering that this was his first comment on LW. I'm assuming he did an honest effort to present his point of view, why not praise that and point out the way this site works?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 23 June 2012 07:46:51AM 0 points [-]

You quoted this:

A better response to a mistake would be to reinforce the effort: "Good effort! You're almost there! Try once more."

and previously said of the larger passage:

Now that we all know this, shouldn't we abolish downvotes?

But when you tried it out:

Alicorn,

Good effort, you are almost there

this was her response:

Good effort, you are almost there

...

Dude. Subtlety?

Didn't work. Shall I praise your effort and urge you to do better next time? Would that work for you any better than it did for Alicorn?

Comment author: keen 01 October 2012 02:15:54AM 1 point [-]

We hardly have enough evidence after just one attempt. Additionally, subtlety is a form of deceit, and not generally encouraged in rational discussion.

Anyway, my complaint would have to be toward the out-of-hand dismissal of yaro's post, rather than offering a substantive disagreement or at least a link regarding the perceived flaws in yaro's argument. That's proper rationalist encouragement. No subtlety required.

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