You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Wei_Dai comments on "Hide comments in downvoted threads" is now active - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: Wei_Dai 05 October 2012 07:23AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (87)

Comments (87)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 05 October 2012 09:12:01AM 6 points [-]

I asked Eliezer:

do you expect people to change their voting behavior to not downvote to -4 except for trolling

And he answered:

And yes, I'd wistfully hope for some amount of community norm-change around, "If it's worth replying to, clearly it can't be so bad that I ought to vote it down to -4"

So apparently he does want people to be aware of the mechanism while voting.

Comment author: EricHerboso 05 October 2012 07:09:22PM 7 points [-]

I really dislike this. It makes me feel like we all have the responsibility to upvote downvoted threads if we happen to notice discussion going on downstream. After all, if discussion is happening, then it should be greater than -4, and so we should upvote in circumstances where we otherwise would have not voted.

I like the option of not voting. I upvote when I see something I think we should have more of, leave alone the majority of stuff, and downvote only when I see something inappropriate. Our choices are NOT binary, but ternary. Yet this new system of hiding at -4 takes away my choice to not upvote. If I see worthwhile discussion downstream, I feel obligated to upvote.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 05 October 2012 02:43:23PM 5 points [-]

"If it's worth replying to, clearly it can't be so bad that I ought to vote it down to -4"

I'm not sure how I'd even notice if this norm were in place or not. After all, a -4 comment with replies is not evidence that there exists a person who both voted it down to -4 and replied.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 October 2012 09:38:20AM *  2 points [-]

Thank you for the link!

However, my (motivated, I admit) reading of that text is that Eliezer wants to bring attention to a paradox of downvoting a comment and discussing below the comment. Either the comment is an interesting discussion-starter, and then it should not be downvoted; or the comment is worthless, and then people should not start a discussion below it. Downvoting a comment and discussing below it is kind of supporting something you oppose.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2012 02:52:21PM 7 points [-]

If it's a seriously misguided but good-faith comment by a newbie, I might want to downvote it and explain why I did it. Hanlon's razor.

Comment author: Nighteyes5678 09 October 2012 01:05:25AM -1 points [-]

But, if it's a newbie and you knew that changing it from a -3 to a -4 would end the discussion, wouldn't you just not down vote it, and explain your problem or correction?

This new change seems to me to be a way for someone to end a conversation, though they had to have 3 other people help them get it there. Is that an intentional change we want to make?

Comment author: [deleted] 09 October 2012 07:38:23AM 2 points [-]

I was arguing against EY's argument mentioned by Viliam_Bur in favour of this change, which I'm opposed to. Of course, given that the change has been implemented, I won't downvote a post at -3 unless it's obvious spam or something.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 October 2012 09:35:57PM 1 point [-]

Not just metaphorically. People are behaviorally reinforced into trolls because attention is reward and provocation gets attention. By downvoting something and commenting in reply to it, you are building positive associations to getting downvoted, a rather psychologically-sick sort of internal state that is a very bad thing to do to anyone. Would you consider it a nice thing to do to follow somebody around and give them a smile and a kiss each time they lost their temper or experienced some other failure of will, so as to reinforce that behavior? No, right?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 06 October 2012 12:49:03AM *  10 points [-]

Could you taboo "trolling". I think several distinct things are being lumped under that word. Here are the kind of posts that tend to get downvoted:

1) Simply being obnoxious, e.g., "First Post!!!!". As far as I know, these are almost non-existent here.

2) Someone arguing for a crazy position they don't believe.

3) Someone who genuinely believes a crazy position.

4) Someone arguing for a reasonable position that causes some voters to get mind-killed.

Which subset of these do you mean by "trolling" and what do you think is the appropriate response to each?

Comment author: Kindly 06 October 2012 01:35:05AM 6 points [-]

You forget 5) Someone arguing for a position (crazy or otherwise) in a deliberately provocative way.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 October 2012 07:53:57AM 1 point [-]

Trolling: Provocation for the sake of response.

Comment author: MixedNuts 10 October 2012 07:44:41PM 3 points [-]

Pattern-match:

why do so many people accuse others of wanting attention when the actions prompting it are entirely not focused on other people at all, while they don’t tell people that starting conversations is attention seeking even though it is?

Almost all comments are posted at least in part for the sake of response. What's provocation? In particular, how is it different from nonconformism?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 06 October 2012 10:56:28PM 4 points [-]

Ok, the next question is whether being voted below -3 is a good proxy for a comment being provocation for the sake of response.

For example, I strongly suspect eridu simply honestly believes the insane ideas he espouses, does he count as "provocation for the sake of response", if not what do you think the appropriate response to his comments should have been?

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit