lincolnquirk comments on [Meta] The Decline of Discussion: Now With Charts! - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Gavin 04 June 2014 10:02PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (105)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: lincolnquirk 05 June 2014 05:23:40PM 8 points [-]

I once posted to Main (http://lesswrong.com/lw/6uw/how_to_enjoy_being_wrong/).

Afterwards, I felt bad about it somehow - like I had done something wrong or unappreciated -- despite having a substantially positive karma balance on that post. I think the reason was that almost all the top-level comments were neutral or negative and there was not much encouraging discussion, and I think the post might have been moved to Discussion - it was certainly not promoted.

It's actually interesting to go back and look at that because I now realize that that was a reasonably successful post and probably should have encouraged me further. Instead it did not. I wonder if something similar has happened to others.

Comment author: Gavin 05 June 2014 06:23:11PM 7 points [-]

Looks to me like you were a victim of a culture of hyperdeveloped cynicism and skepticism. It's much easier to tear things down and complain than to create value, so we end up discouraging anyone trying to make anything useful.