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JoshuaZ comments on Can we stop using the word "rationalism"? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Is there as much of a problem with the karma system as you make it out to be? I've posted comments critical of cryonics, comments critical of the idea of hard take off being likely, comments critical of Eliezer's writing style, and comments critical of general LW understanding of history of science. Almost every such comment has been voted up(and I can point to individual comments in all those categories that have been voted up).
I suspect that quality threshold for critical comments being voted up is higher than that for non-critical comments, and that the threshold is similarly more strict for low quality comments being likely to be voted down. But, that's a common problem, and in any event, high quality comments aren't often voted down. So, I fail to see how anyone would be substantially discouraged from posting critical comments unless they just weren't very familiar with the system here.
Yeah, this is my experience. I've posted lots of comments and even whole posts critical of Eliezer on this point or that point and have been upvoted heavily because I made my point and defended it well.
So I'm not sure the karma system makes it so you can't voice contrarian opinions. The karma system seems to enforce the idea that you defend what you say competently.
Case in point: Mitchell's heavily upvoted comment to which we are now responding.
It seems to me that the karma system needn't foster any actual intolerance for dissent among voters for it to have a chilling effect on dissenting newcomers. If a skeptical newcomer encounters the site, reads a few dozen posts, and notices that posts concordant with community norms tend to get upvoted, while dissonant ones tend to get downvoted, then from that observer's perspective the evidence indicates that voicing their skepticism would be taken poorly -- even if in actuality the voting effects are caused by high-visibility concordant posts belonging to bright and well-spoken community members and high-visibility dissonant posts belonging to trolls or random crackpots (who in turn have incentives to ignore those same chilling effects).
Without getting rid of the karma system entirely, one possible defense against this sort of effect might be to encourage a community norm of devil's advocacy. I see some possible coordination problems with that, though.
If the community norms are ones we don't endorse, then sure, let's overthrow those norms and replace them with norms we do endorse, in a targeted way. Which norms are we talking about, and what ought we replace them with?
Conversely, if we're talking about all norms... that is, if we're suggesting either that we endorse no norms at all, or that we somehow endorse a norm while at the same time avoiding discouraging contributions that violate that norm... I'm not sure that even makes sense. How is the result of that, even if we were successful, different from any other web forum?
I was trying to remain agnostic with regard to any specific norms. I'm not worried about particular values so much as the possibility of differentially discouraging sincere, well-informed dissent in newcomers relative to various forms of insincere or naive dissent: over time I'd expect that effect to isolate group opinion in ways which aren't necessarily good for our collective sanity. This seems related to Eliezer's evaporative cooling idea, except that it's happening on recruitment -- perhaps a semipermeable membrane would be a good analogy.