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army1987 comments on "Hide comments in downvoted threads" is now active - Less Wrong Discussion
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On reflection, I think I got a bit frustrated towards the end of my discussion with wedrifid, and lost some of my "cool", but overall I would say that the discussion has been productive at least for me, given the inherent difficulties in human communications (and the (still mysterious-to-me) refusal on wedrifid's part to answer many of my questions). While the information I got wasn't what I set out to obtain at the start, nevertheless what I got is useful. For example I've learned that there are a number of forum behaviors that he considers undesirable and is willing to "punish" (which he apparently means in a somewhat technical sense):
To be clear, naturally I don't disagree that these behaviors are bad but think wedrifid tends err in the direction of judging too many people guilty. Regardless, at least in the future I can be more careful about my uses of rhetorical questions, inference of motives and beliefs, and quoting (e.g., do not use them unless I'm extremely confident that their actual and intended effects won't be misunderstood) and hope to avoid some of the "punishments" that way.
It may be that in retrospect the amount of useful information exchanged seems really small compared to the amount of text exchanged. I think in part that's due to hindsight bias and illusion of transparency that makes us think communication is easier than it really is, but almost certainly there are also things we could have done better, that would have made the exchange go more smoothly and efficiently. If anyone has any suggestions in that regard, I think (at least speaking for myself) they would be very much welcomed.
I wrote a few here, then stored them away: I want to hold off on proposing solutions. Let's discuss the problem instead.
What started the whole thing was a question asked by komponisto, presumably intended to get at some interesting aspect of the object-level discussion, but which rapidly went meta (not "meta" in the sense of discussing LW, but "meta" in the sense of discussing the discussion).
Going meta isn't the problem, per se. Losing track of the object-level inquiry altogether, while the meta discussion explodes into a 167-comment beast from a one-word comment? Yes, I think that qualifies.
The original comment which led to the explosion is upvoted at +8. (That's one way the "technical" fix of censoring descendants of highly downvoted comments might be missing its target, not so much low-quality comments as polarizing, i.e. trollish, comments.)
The thread rapidly hits the limit of reply nesting (10 levels), so that only a portion of it can be seen simultaneously with the original exchange (komponisto's question and nsheppard's one-word reply). Your replies, for instance, appear only on page 2. It's a safe assumptions that readers who are coming across your replies have lost the original context, unless they were involved in the controversy from the start.
On this first page, several of wedrifid's comments - and only wedrifid's - are highly downvoted. This further reinforces the hypothesis that the thread is polarizing and information cascades are taking place.
Reading your first intervention requires loading page 2 of the thread, and reading through to the bitter end requires one more page. This is way beyond what adds value to most LW readers except the most dedicated, and reminds me of the admonitions against thread mode.
Starting from your first intervention, the pattern becomes mostly a "ping-pong" one of you and wedrifid going back and forth. Only one other commenter is active on page 2 of the thread (TheOtherDave). A few others pipe up on page 3, but I suspect that by that point these are people being dragged into the conversation (from Recent Comments) because it has started to resemble a flamefest.
Between page 2 and 3, the discussion has drifted from "meta" in the sense of discussion-on-discussion, to "meta" in the sense of discussion-about-who-downvotes-what, i.e. into slime-dripping cancer territory.
Yes, Eliezer's "cancer" pronouncement is downvoted and ironically buried in a thread that has several ancestor comments which are Eliezer's and highly downvoted. It nevertheless captures a key truth: extended discussions of the game-theoretical aspects of the filtering features of LW do not have much potential to generate useful inferences from true beliefs. (Or stated more succinctly: most meta-discussion is neither epistemically nor instrumentally rational.)
I do think there is value in "meta" in the sense of discussion-about-discussion, however, and in particular in discussion of community norms, and I agree with your assessment of your own contributions.
That's about as much as I can say without starting to make recommendations.
checking my understanding of this telegraphic little clause:
polarizing: those who invest the effort in following the argument will tend to pick a side they like best and vote accordingly?
information cascade: without realizing it, or, knowingly forgoing their own deep evaluation, people affiliate themselves with the winning side, piling on extra, uninformative, votes?
Yes on both counts.
Thanks. I don't have much to add and look forward to seeing your suggestions.
This may be a stupid question, but... why do you want to avoid "punishment" (in the technical sense you reference here)?
OK. Thanks for the explanation.