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philh comments on Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yeah, this is about what I thought.
It seems to me that ideologically based group karma bombing is a general violation of the norms necessary for a civilized community, but it happens here fairly frequently, and it happens predominantly in one ideological direction.
All sorts of people charge about on their hobby horses around here. Are you so quick to karma bomb the riders who are more ideologically sympatico with you? Not so much, right?
I suppose it's rather useless of me to complain. You want him to shut up. You and your ideological compatriots have achieved the next best thing - disappearing his posts into the karma memory hole. Mission Accomplished.
What do you suppose would happen if people more of my ideological ilk started to respond in kind? Isn't tit for tat the game theoretic appropriate response?
A lot of my reply has been covered already, so I'd just like to make a few points that I don't think have been made so far.
It looks like I've downvoted fewer than a dozen of aa's comments.
One more reason that I don't think I'm like Eugine, is that if aa ever actually asked "I'm being downvoted a lot, what gives?" I would be happy to explain. As far as I know he's never asked, which is one of the reasons that I think he's acting in bad faith. Eugine didn't do this. IIRC, at least one of his targets said that they PMed him asking for an explanation, and received another round of downvoting.
This particular post really does strike me as bad. Yes, one could steelman it into something reasonable. I don't feel inclined or obligated to do that. There would be little benefit to me compared to the other things I could put effort into. And I'm not going to do it for aa's benefit until he starts acting like a truth-seeker. This is part of what I meant by the benefit of the doubt.
(I think that this next paragraph is pointing in the direction of something true, but isn't quite right:)
I don't think aa's problem is just being overly political, or what his specific politics are. (My opinions about PUA and neoreaction are slightly negative, but sympathetic.) The way he's being political feels like an attempt at subversion. It's like he wants to shift the LW Overton window, and the way he's doing that is by acting like the Overton window is somewhere other than where it actually is. Maybe the Overton window should be wider, but the way to widen it is to argue for things that are outside it, acknowledging that they are currently not well regarded. If you act like PUA is inside the window when it isn't, then current readers will get less value than they could if you spoke to the current window; and outsiders will get the wrong impression of LW, which could be the entire point (drive away people who dislike it, attract people who like it).