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TakisMichel comments on Open thread, 21-27 April 2014 - Less Wrong
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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..?
I'm interested, that's why I'm dissectng the post to try and find the reason that it was downvoted. My conclusion is that it was downvoted because the phrase you quoted sounds unnecessarily harsh out of context, and not because of anything regarding facts or offense.
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.
Psychonautics is entirely about the "hominem" and inner experience, it can't not be relevant. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
And, depending on where you live, I wouldn't worry about revealing anything, especially if you don't deal, especially if you can feign not currently using it. There are plenty of places on the internet where people talk about psychedelic drug usage openly, and they've been around for a while and not been shut down. To worry at all would be insanely paranoid.
LW is a place where people know their fallacies and pattern match to them. You will get downvotes for things like that. That's simply the kind of place that LW happens to be.
As far as your argument goes you haven't made clear why someone can't get knowledge about psychonautics by reading what other people who have experiences write about psychonautics. How LW you do have a burden to make that argument in more depth if you want to get away with ad hominem.
If you want a security clearance in the US than you need to answer questions about past drug use. If you say on that form that you don't have used LSD in the past but there a record of you on the internet admitting to LSD usage that might bring you into major trouble is someone finds out. The same goes for other jobs. Basic courtesy is to allow others the freedom to choose whether or not to reveal information like that about themselves and therefore don't put other in a situation where they are obliged to reveal information like that.
God I hope not, that's like not having heard of the Disagreement Hierarchy. The "central point" was about inner experience, so pattern matching towards "DH6" is the more "lesswrong" thing to do then to pattern match towards "ad hominem". Pattern matching towards "ad hominem" is an example of the "standard rationality" thing that Eliezer spend the entire Sequences attempting to deconstruct and improve upon. If LW has degenerated back to that, then maybe we need another read-through of the sequences.
If you actually use your real name for everything you say online, then it's your own fault when you get in such a bind. Basic courtesy is to know when to use your real name and when not to, and to not let that shit happen.
In reality rationality is about accepting that the world is the way it is and not as you want it to be. In this case it seems like you don't want to accept it the way it is. In this case it always useful to keep your audience in mind and if you are making some far off point about psychonautics then you have to be extra careful or accepted that you get downvoted.
Stylometry is pretty good these days. At the 29C3 there was a talk that demostrated a 72% successful author attribution rate for some underground online forums. Underground meaning forums where illegal goods where sold, so the participants are interested in being anonymous. The idea that you can reasonable protect your anonymity by using a nickname is naive.