= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on Open thread, Oct. 5 - Oct. 11, 2015 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (346)
I've received several PMs from different users that would like to continue a discussion, but would not do it publicly -- they were afraid to be received negatively, or in other words, "negative karma".
I thought people on LW would be able to look past insignificant and shallow virtual ratings that I. personally, cannot tell what their meaning is. My own karma fluctuates between -15 to 15 and I'm perfectly fine with that; but other people seem to view it as some steps toward hell.
I thought I could escape all the usual nonsense surrounding discussions here, but I think I might be wrong.
You could treat it as a failed gut check and tell 'em to go grow an pair and then brass-plate it.
Or you can think about it as image management. Reputations are delicate things and are more than just your karma score.
Once again, a point I want to emphasize: I thought that at LessWrong people would be able to overcome things such as "image management" and "reputation". In my view those things are just a few steps away from not asking a question or not presenting an opinion. Being scared of being wrong won't make your situation any better.
Do tell me if this isn't the case, or this isn't supposed to be the case.
Unless Lesswrong exists in a vacuum, it has no or almost no power to overcome those things. Even if you didn't worry about being judged by people on lesswrong, the risk of being judged by someone elsewhere online still exists.
Why do you think this would be a good thing? Reputations are a valid concept, highly useful in social interactions. If you care about social interactions, you should (= it's rational to) care about your reputation which leads directly to the image management.
The real issue is the trade-off between maintaining a desirable reputation and the costs of doing so (e.g. not asking questions for the fear of looking stupid).
Some of us are exhausted of the status games of meatspace life and just want to dissect ideas.
No one forces you to play status games. If you don't care, you don't care so just dissect ideas and ignore the rest.
LessWrong was talking about other people being too concerned with their image. If you don't have this problem, well, there is no problem, is there?
You can choose groups with different status indicators and different ways of measuring reputation, but you probably can't find any human communication (and I'd argue this applies intra-personally as well as inter-; you're dealing with past-you and constraining future-you RIGHT NOW) that doesn't involve status, power, and image.
For myself (and from what I can tell of some others) I've chosen to accept and incorporate my humanity and the complexity of human social interactions, rather than "overcome", which is hard to distinguish from "denial of reality".
Image management, and especially self-image management, are important and difficult. They're going to color all human interactions, whether you or not you prefer that.