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Mitchell_Porter comments on Open thread, July 16-22, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: David_Gerard 15 July 2013 08:13PM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 20 July 2013 12:00:48PM 5 points [-]

There's a user at RationalWiki, one of the dedicated LW critics there, called "Baloney Detection". I often wondered who it was. The image at 5:45 in this video, and the fact that "Baloney Detection" also edited the "Julia Galef" page at RW to decry her association with LW, tells me this is him...

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 20 July 2013 03:20:26PM 8 points [-]

By the way, the RW article about LW now seems more... rational... than the last time I checked. (Possibly because our hordes of cultists sposored by the right-wing extremist conspiracy fixed it, hoping to receive the promised 3^^^3 robotic virgins in singularitarian paradise as a reward.) You can't say the same thing about the talk pages, though.

It's strange. Now I should probably update towards "a criticism of LW found online probably somehow comes from two or three people on RW". On their talk pages, Aris Katsaris sounds like a lonely sane voice in a desert of... I guess it's supposed to be a "rationality with a snarky point of view"; which works like this -- I can say anything, and if you prove me lying, I say I was exaggerating to make it more funny.

Some interesting bits from the (mostly boring) talk page:

Yudkowsky is an uneducated idiot because there simply can't be 3^^^3 distinct people

A proper skeptical argument about why "Torture vs Dust Specks" is wrong.

what happened is that they hired Luke Muehlhauser who doesn't know about anything technical but can adequately/objectively research what a research organization would look like, and then push towards outwards appearance of such

This is why LW people care about Löb's Theorem, in case you (LW cultists not belonging to the inner circle) didn't know.

Using Thiel's money to list yourself as co-author is very weak evidence of competence.

An ad-hoc explanation is being prepared. Criticising Eliezer for being a high school dropout and never publishing in peer-reviewed journal is so much fun... but if he would some day publish in a peer-reviewed journal and get citations or whatever recognition by the scientific establishment, RationalWiki already knows the true explanation -- the right-wing conspiracy bribed the scientists. (If the day comes that RW starts criticizing scientists for supporting LW, I will be laughing and munching popcorn.)

Holden Karnofsky's critique had a significant number of downvotes as well - being high profile, they didn't want to burn the bridges, so it wasn't deleted, and a huge number of non-regulars upvoted it.

How do you know what you know? Specifically, where are those data about who upvoted and downvoted Holden coming from? (Or it is an alternative explanation-away? LW does not accept criticism and censors everything, but this one time the power of the popular opinion prevented them from deleting it.)

And finally a good idea:

This talk page is becoming one of the central coordination points for LW/SI's critic/stalkers. Maybe that should be mentioned on the page too?

I vote yes.

Comment author: David_Gerard 27 July 2013 01:56:55PM 1 point [-]

The article was improved 'cos AD (a RW regular who doesn't care about LW) rewrote it.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 21 July 2013 12:29:36AM *  1 point [-]

It was disappointing to see Holden's posts get any down votes.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 21 July 2013 08:49:58AM *  0 points [-]

I agree, but we are speaking about approximately 13 downvotes from 265 total votes. So we have at least 13 people on LessWrong who oppose a high-quality criticism.

The speculation about regulars downvoting and non-regulars upvoting is without any evidence; could have also been the other way round. We also had a few trolls and crazy people here in the past. And by the way, it's not like people from RationalWiki couldn't create throw-away accounts here. So, with the same zero evidence, I could propose an alternative hypothesis that Holden was actually downvoted by people from RW who smartly realized that his "criticism" of LW is actually no criticism. But that would just be silly.

Comment author: wedrifid 27 July 2013 03:48:54PM 7 points [-]

I agree, but we are speaking about approximately 13 downvotes from 265 total votes. So we have at least 13 people on LessWrong who oppose a high-quality criticism.

Or there are approximately 13 people who believe the post is worth a mere 250 votes, not 265 and so used their vote to push it in the desired direction. Votes needn't be made or considered to be made independently of each other.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 July 2013 08:32:26PM 3 points [-]

Or there are approximately 13 people who believe the post is worth a mere 250 votes, not 265 and so used their vote to push it in the desired direction.

One data point: I used to do that kind of things before the “% positive” thing was implemented, but I no longer do that, at least not deliberately.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 July 2013 12:12:15AM 0 points [-]

I am pleasantly surprised that they didn't get overwhelmed by the one or two LW trolls that swamped them a couple months back.

Looking through the talk pages, it seems those guys partially ran out of steam, which let cooler heads prevail.