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Username comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: FAWS 11 April 2012 03:39AM

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Comment author: Username 11 April 2012 07:45:51PM * 2 points [-]

I agree that we should have a spoiler tag.

One data point in favor of rot13 however: The extra effort it takes to decode is an incentive to try and figure things out on your own.

EDIT: I mean this in general, not just for HPMoR.

Comment author: Random832 11 April 2012 08:11:52PM * 0 points [-]

This is not a point for using it for something that the majority of people posting in the thread already know. At that point it's just annoying.

EDIT: removed some stuff that's needlessly confrontational and redundant to a different post I made.

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 12 April 2012 09:16:30AM 1 point [-]

This is not a point for using it for something that the majority of people posting in the thread already know.

If spreading spoilers hurts then its hurt is not limited to vulnerable people posting in the thread, but encompasses all vulnerable people reading the thread.

I doubt you have evidence that the majority of people posting in the thread are aware of the spoiler. I am certain you have only weak reasons to believe you know about all the people reading the thread. I lurked here for over a year.

Comment author: Random832 12 April 2012 12:15:57PM 1 point [-]

Do the numerous positive-scored posts on this thread mentioning the spoiler (due to the sporadic enforcement of the rule) count as such evidence? If not, why not?

Comment author: Percent_Carbon comment score below threshold [+] (16 children)

Comment author: Random832 12 April 2012 12:48:10PM 0 points [-]

From doing some searching, this thread contains at least nine positively scored comments I classify as mentioning the spoiler. here and here are representative examples.

Full list of the "nine": 6azo 6ar5 6amx 6al7 6as6 6all 6anm 6ait 6alr. Some of these are weaker than others, but the overall impression I have is that people have no problem writing posts as if it is a fact with no spoiler obfuscation.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 12 April 2012 01:05:19PM * 2 points [-]

It's not treating it a fact that's frowned upon, same way that it's not frowned upon to treat Hat&Cloak as Quirrel, or Dumbledore as Santa Claus - we don't ask that people treat their conclusions as if they're spoilers.

What's against the rules is to reveal the specific announcements that have been "unrevealed".

Is this too fine a distinction for you to understand? Here's a clue, none of those nine comments say anything about what Eliezer has or hasn't revealed in retracted Authorial Notes.

So give it a rest already.

Comment author: thomblake 12 April 2012 02:42:00PM 0 points [-]

I have is that people have no problem writing posts as if it is a fact with no spoiler obfuscation.

That is correct. The policy does not require that those comments be obfuscated.

You need to obfuscate "Eliezer said X" and you don't need to obfuscate "X".

For example, I would have to obfuscate "Eliezer told me that the true source of magic is really a supercomputer in Atlantis" (not spoilered here because he didn't really) but I would not have to obfuscate an assertion / guess / assumption "the true source of magic is really a supercomputer in Atlantis".

The policy is very clear - if you don't think the policy is clear on this, please point to how the wording can be improved.

Comment author: Random832 comment score below threshold [+] (12 children)

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 12 April 2012 03:04:34PM 2 points [-]

Your whole argument seems to be "if someone might potentially get spoiled, then by golly everyone should be".

We realize the rule can't prevent all spoilage. But it can reduce it, and (it being simple and specific) it's extremely easy to follow for anyone who is a non-jerk.

Comment author: Random832 12 April 2012 03:10:59PM * -2 points [-]

I don't think the rule right now prevents any spoilage. It is implausible that anyone learns anything from hearing "Eliezer said X" that they don't already have (including the inevitable conclusion that Eliezer must have, in fact, said X) from seeing everyone else treat X as unquestioned fact. The rule should, if anything, be expanded to require people to either rot13 those parts of these posts, go through the motions of treating it as a hypothesis, and at the very least avoid casually tossing off allusions to X when it's not central to what they're posting about.

P.S. "it's extremely easy to follow" of course it is, that's the problem - it's easy to follow because it is written to avoid inconveniencing people except for people who don't know the secret handshake. A real rule that actually had a chance of preventing people from being spoiled would impose inconvenience on people who actually matter and might get pushback from people whose karma you can't wipe out.

continue this thread »

Comment author: loserthree 12 April 2012 04:33:51PM * 1 point [-]

Thanks for the mention. It's nice to hear that my contributions have been noted.

Just an FYI, I said almost the same thing in my very first post, "Mr. Hat-and-Cloak, who we are to understand is most certainly Quirrell" The difference is that you know a spoiler about the one, and don't know a spoiler about the other. In both cases there are sufficient in-text cues for me to speak as confidently as I do.

Comment author: Random832 13 April 2012 05:59:36PM 1 point [-]

This is not a point for using it for something that the majority of people posting in the thread already know.

If spreading spoilers hurts then its hurt is not limited to vulnerable people posting in the thread, but encompasses all vulnerable people reading the thread.

The context of this post was "rot13" vs "a proper collapsing or color-based spoiler tag to be implemented in markdown", so this is not sufficient to make difficulty a point in rot13's favor, even if it ever was. The people who don't want to read spoilers don't have to view them, in the case of a spoiler tag. Choosing a spoiler tag over rot13 only harms people who A) are harmed by seeing a spoiler [and do not already know the spoiler] and B) have enough willpower to resist un-rot13ing it, but not enough to avoid selecting the text to view it without an external program. That sounds like a very tiny group.

Username comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion

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