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RobertLumley comments on Elevator pitches/responses for rationality / AI - Less Wrong Discussion

17 Post author: lukeprog 02 February 2012 08:35PM

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Comment author: 911truther 03 February 2012 02:44:21AM 1 point [-]

To save you some time: the standard response is "I'm being censored! You're an Eliezer-cult! All these downvotes are just because you're scared of the Truth!".

I never said anything like this and I never invoked Eleizer. I don't understand why you're telling me off for something I didn't do. Look at my post history if you don't trust me.

What you are doing is not fitting into the community norms of discussion, like research and linking/referring to specific sources

It only makes sense to do so when making a claim. Yet people on this site have refused to back up their own claims with citations because apparently "I'm not worth bothering with".

but there are almost never flame wars

I never flamed anyone. The only guy who is calling people names "like troll for example" is you (well now that you've done it others are following your lead too, well done..).

Are you enjoying wasting your time on this website?

Not really, I didn't expect to get rejected so harsly. I've read all the sequences twice and been rational for years so I don't know what the problem is. What's the point of all this meta discussion, why is everyone trying to drag me into these metadiscussions and brand me as a troll after I passed 100 downvotes. We should get back onto the actual topic.

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Comment author: RobertLumley 03 February 2012 03:17:17AM 13 points [-]

One of the problems is that you say things like "I've been rational for years". Sorry. No, you haven't. EY hasn't been rational for years. You may have been an aspiring rationalist, but that's a far cry from actually being rational. When you say things like that it is extremely off-putting because it sounds self-congratulatory. That's something that this community struggles with a lot, and we typically heavily downvote things that are that way because they send very bad signals about what this website is. Beyond that, when it's said by someone with the username "911truther", it implies an element of "You're not rational unless you're a truther too", which mean it or not, is how it comes across.

Secondly, and this relates, your username. It's inherently political, which brings up all of our opposition to politics every time you make a post. That's not a good thing, and it will be very difficult for anyone on this site to take you seriously. If two different people wrote two articles that were of exactly equal caliber, and one was named BobSmith, and the other was named Obama2012, I would anticipate at least 2-3 times the upvoting on the former and 2-3 times the downvoting on the latter. And 9/11 is so much more of a polarizing issue. The vast, vast majority of people here disagree with you. But roland, despite being wildly downvoted every time he brings up 9/11, actually manages positive karma, because it's not inherently brought up every time he posts. I can not recommend strongly enough that you delete your account and create a new username if you wish to continue on this site. If you're a 911 truther, I would not suggest lying about that, but choosing that as the phrase by which you identify yourself is not a very effective strategy for being taken seriously on this site.

Thirdly, the great grandparent to this isn't a terrible comment. I agree with you there. I likely would have upvoted it had it been made by a different username, since I didn't think it deserved that level of downvoting (but not because I thought it was particularly wonderful in and of itself).