Gondolinian comments on Rationality Quotes December 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Salemicus 03 December 2014 10:33PM

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Comment author: Gondolinian 12 December 2014 10:57:19PM *  12 points [-]

Nope, just saving my first choice of quote for the beginning of the next thread. I figure if I post a good quote now, people will mostly only see it from the recent comment and recent quote feeds, and after a few others get posted, people will mostly forget about it and not, if they were to like it, upvote it. Whereas if it were one of the first posts in a thread, and people liked it and started upvoting it, it would stay high on the page and gather even more attention and upvotes, creating a positive feedback loop which would give me karma.

Machiavellian, isn't it? I doubt it'll work out that well, but I figure it's worth a shot.

Comment author: 27chaos 12 December 2014 11:06:23PM 4 points [-]

^Everyone should upvote this in an ironic celebration of your honesty.

Comment author: Vulture 12 December 2014 11:52:03PM 2 points [-]

I think that we use "Best" (which is a complicated thing other than "absolute points") rather than "Top" (absolute points) precisely to reduce the effectiveness of that strategy.

Comment author: dxu 13 December 2014 02:42:57AM *  3 points [-]

That's interesting. What criterion/criteria does "Best" use, then?

And on a different but related note: does it really negate the strategy? I note that, despite using the "Best" setting, this page still tends to display higher-karma comments near the top; furthermore, most of those high-karma comments seem to have been posted pretty early in the month. That suggests to me that Gondolinian's strategy may still have a shot.

Comment author: Vulture 13 December 2014 02:55:55AM 3 points [-]
Comment author: dxu 15 December 2014 04:57:28AM *  3 points [-]

All right, thanks. So, I gave both articles a read-through, and I think that as described, the system implemented won't necessarily negate the strategy (though it may somewhat reduce said strategy's effectiveness). Really, it all depends on how awesome Gondolinian's quote is; if it's awesome enough to get a rating that's 100% positive, then the display order will be organized by confidence level, which in practice just means a greater number of votes most of the time (more votes → less uncertainty), which in turn means it'll need to be posted earlier, which brings us back to the original situation, blah blah blah etc. (A single downvote, however, would be sufficient to screw up the entire affair, so there's that.) I guess that's why you originally said it would only reduce the strategy's effectiveness, not eliminate it entirely.

That's awesome. My metaphorical hat is off to Gondolinian for figuring out a way to game the system--and crucially, take the second step: countering akrasia and actually doing it. Instrumental rationality at its finest.

Comment author: Gondolinian 15 December 2014 09:55:44PM *  2 points [-]

if it's awesome enough to get a rating that's 100% positive

Don't bet on it. :)