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TakisMichel comments on Open thread, 21-27 April 2014 - Less Wrong
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Comments (346)
It shouldn't matter why you downvote something, just give an explanation for why you did so. Ideally the same goes for upvotes, where you should explain why you upvoted (if your explanation is any more valuable than "This.").
Trying to define what an upvote or downvote "means" or "shouldn't mean" is futile and beside the point.
No no no no: the beauty of votes is it gives us a very quick and easy way of knowing comment quality without flooding the forum with "good post!" Or countless explanations of things people already know.
Why? What is "the point"? For me, the point is creating a community that is fun, useful and lives up to its ideals of rationality and humanist virtue (whatever the latter means for you, be it utilitarianism, effective altruism etc).
The point is for commenters (and the audience for that matter) not to have to wonder about why they got downvoted/upvoted, in other words for the meaning of that partcular upvote/downvote to be made explicit by the upvoter/downvoter.
And why not? Some introspection does a body good...
...
It would do good to encourage more explaining of upvotes and downvotes. We're not at the point where there's "too much" of it. And, if there was "just the right" amount of it, then we wouldn't be having this discusison.
For a diverse population of people there is no such thing as "just the right amount". Even if you set it at some kind of a central measure (mean, weighted mean, median, etc.), the left tail would complain it's too little and the right tail will complain it's too much.
Speaking personally, most of my downvotes are because the post seemed to me either stupid or dickish. I am not sure LW will gain much if I start posting dick ASCII art as an explanation for downvotes... X-D
Well, if you're adament about it not being systemic, then (if you or someone reading this would be so kind) help me understand my own case, of a few of my comments before this conversation being severely downvoted. I was surprised at the responses, and without any replies, I'm still in the dark. If you could show me the light, then I'd be grateful.
Please provide links as it's hard to see comments at -5 and below. The only strongly downvoted comment of yours that I see itself says "hard downvote for stupendous arrogance" so I'm not sure why are you surprised...
In response to someone wholesale dismissing an entire area of scientific study without having had any experience in it, "stupendous arrogance" is both accurate and tame. I guess "stupendous" kind of sounds like "stupid", but that's probably not why people downvoted the comment.
I thought you were interested in why people downvoted you and not in justifying your comments..?
Basically you are engaging in an ad hominem argument and not making decent argument for your position.
Asking people on a public forum for whether the have experience with illegal drugs is also a big no.
Is that a terminal goal? Or is it an instrumental goal serving to achieve something else?
Both/neither? It's a reasonable norm and would also help alleviate some personal frustrations. (Sidenote: invoking "Terminal" anything is usually dangerous and unnecessary, c.f. this.)