Overcoming bias guy meme | quickmeme

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Overcoming bias guy meme | quickmeme — LessWrong

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Vladimir_Nesov13y120

I'm retracting my comment because I don't feel like having my karma lowered by people who don't like it.

This is a misuse of the retraction feature. Don't do this.

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A1987dM13y-20

I disagree -- retracting a comment just means “I regret saying this”, whatever the reasons for that.

OTOH, I think that as a matter of honesty one should still keep the original text of the retracted comment intact (possibly with an explanation for the retraction added), unless it is contains potential memetic hazards (even for readers who know the writer has disavowed it), discloses confidential information, or similar.

EDIT: Should have looked into this more carefully -- apparently he retracted the comment immediately after posting it. Yes, I agree that's improper. Retracting.

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0[anonymous]13y

Even though my retracted comment can't be downvoted, I've received 3 downvotes on other comments because of this. In any case, if you don't want people to work to the metric, why put the metric in place? And for those students of psychology: was I downvoted because I misused the feature, or was I downvoted because I stated what I was doing? I have certainly prophylactically retracted comments before without being downvoted, but in those instances I didn't say why I was retracting. I'll retract this comment too. If you want to downvote me for this it will cost you extra keystrokes. Is it really a good use of your lesswrong.com time?

8ModusPonies13y

EDIT: The below is based on my misunderstanding of terminology. It turns out "retract" and "delete" are different things. Oops. Huh. To me, that sounds like exactly sort of behavior a karma system is supposed to encourage. Post worthless comment => comment downvoted => retract comment => future readers don't waste time reading it. I retract [EDIT: delete] comments in high-traffic subthreads threads if they don't get upvoted after a day or two. Should I stop doing this? (Disclaimer: I did not see the original before it was deleted.)

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