Comment author: Vaniver 10 February 2016 07:21:08PM *  0 points [-]

What are we calling retributive downvoting, incidentally?

The targeted harassment of one user by another user to punish disagreement; letting disagreements on one topic spill over into disagreements on all topics.

That is, if someone has five terrible comments on politics and five mediocre comments on horticulture, downvoting all five politics comments could be acceptable but downvoting all ten is troubling, especially if it's done all at once. (In general, don't hate-read.)

Another way to think about this is that we want to preserve large swings in karma as signals of community approval or disapproval, rather than individuals using long histories to magnify approval or disapproval. It's also problematic to vote up everything someone else has written because you really like one of their recent comments, and serial vote detection algorithms also target that behavior.

We typically see this as sockpuppets instead of serial upvoters, because when someone wants to abuse the karma system they want someone else's total / last thirty days to be low, and they want a particular comment's karma to be high, and having a second account upvote everything they've ever done isn't as useful for the latter.

Comment author: Nornagest 10 February 2016 07:39:26PM *  0 points [-]

The cheapest technical fix would probably be to prohibit voting on a comment after some time has passed, like some subreddits do. This would prevent karma gain from "interest" on old comments, but that probably wouldn't be too big a deal. More importantly, though, it wouldn't prevent ongoing retributive downvoting, which Eugine did (sometimes? I was never targeted) engage in -- only big one-time karma moves.

If we're looking for first steps, though, this is a place to start.

In response to Upcoming LW Changes
Comment author: ChristianKl 08 February 2016 07:26:40PM *  0 points [-]

I think it would be good to have a limit of posts/per/day for people with karma <70% when there there are >10 votes cast on their posts.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 February 2016 10:25:40PM *  1 point [-]

I'm sympathetic, but I do note that this would further incentivize retributive downvoting.

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 February 2016 09:36:34PM *  0 points [-]

Being optimistic is not the same thing as living in denail and ignoring reality. Telling yourself only great thing is likely to make you not be in touch with reality.

That said, there's probably a sweet spot.

I don't think that's a good model. You can be fully in touch with reality and be optimistic through exercises like doing a lot of gratitude journaling.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 February 2016 09:43:39PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not talking about having a generally sunny disposition, although that probably helps; I'm talking about quantifiable questions like "how likely am I to get this job?" Unrealistically high estimates could fairly be described as denial (though a relatively benign form); nonetheless they're empirically correlated with success.

I'm open to the possibility that this isn't causal, though.

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 February 2016 12:36:26AM 0 points [-]

Living in denail isn't helpful for success.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 February 2016 09:33:26PM *  2 points [-]

I'm not sure that's true. All the research I've seen on the subject suggests that successful people in most contexts harbor optimistic rather than accurate views of their chances, skills, and associates.

That said, there's probably a sweet spot.

Comment author: Jacobian 05 February 2016 02:06:37AM 4 points [-]

Here's the data.

As for reasons, I can only offer some speculation since I'm 0/2 on being hot and/or a woman. First of all, I also spend a non-negligible amount of time on my appearance and I like people who are into my humor/intellect/interests/personality and not my looks. Commenting on appearance can also seem vulgar or indicate that you're only looking for sex. Finally, good looking women get complimented on their looks a lot, and not very beautiful women may be insecure about their appearance and question the sincerity of your compliments. I think this applies not just on OkCupid but in most online and offline situations.

Again, just speculating.

Comment author: Nornagest 05 February 2016 08:36:18PM *  1 point [-]

I don't give out a lot of compliments in general. But when I do, I've had better luck complimenting people on appearance when it's stuff they obviously chose and put effort into: a haircut; tattoos; choice in clothing. Few people like to be complimented on stuff they didn't do anything for; many people like to be complimented on stuff they did.

(If you try clothing, though, be aware that "nice top" is likely to be read as "nice breasts".)

Comment author: LessWrong 05 February 2016 07:44:10AM 0 points [-]

There's a difference: on OKC you can filter people based on whatever, in non-OKC situations you don't have that information available to you. I only have the woman's looks (and the women have a perv-o-meter) to notice.

Re-reading your article I think a better way to describe this is "approaches with comparative advantages" and "approaches without comparative advantages".

Comment author: Nornagest 05 February 2016 07:59:26PM *  3 points [-]

You have context. If you meet a woman at a bar, she's probably the kind of person that hangs out at bars. At an Iron Maiden concert, she's probably a metalhead. At a climbing gym, she's probably athletic and at least a little outdoorsey. Even if you just ran into her in a Starbucks, it's still one Starbucks in one neighborhood, and she was there and not somewhere else for a reason. You're filtering, but you're filtering less on what she wrote in one of the little boxes and more on what you both bothered to show up for -- which can actually end up being a stronger filter.

And if you talk to her for a couple minutes, you have more than that. That's true on OKCupid, too, but striking up a conversation there is a stronger indicator of interest than it is in person, so people might be more reluctant to indulge it.

In response to comment by jkaufman on LessWrong 2.0
Comment author: cousin_it 03 December 2015 08:30:11PM *  3 points [-]

Well, I was one of those "previously good posters" (top 10 for a long time) and I left because of the decline in quality. I don't remember exactly, but I think Eliezer also claimed to leave because of nastiness in the comments, not because people were asking him to be more rigorous.

The limiting factor of having an active community on LW is people's desire to hang out here. I strongly believe that desire depends mostly on the average quality of posts they read, and doesn't depend on their freedom to post. Eliezer had a fandom even in the OB days, when no one except him could post at all. Only Scott can post on SSC today, yet each of his posts gathers hundreds of comments. I'm just suggesting the same model here.

In response to comment by cousin_it on LessWrong 2.0
Comment author: Nornagest 04 December 2015 10:36:40PM 5 points [-]

"Nastiness in the comments" and "people asking him to be more rigorous" aren't mutually exclusive. I heard a lot of this in person, so I can't easily provide references, but back when that was all going down I remember a lot of talk from Eliezer and other major contributors about how LW was getting unpleasantly nitpicky.

In Eliezer's case this probably has something to do with the fastest-gun-in-the-west dynamic, where if you're known as a public intellectual in some context you're going to attract a lot of people looking to gain some status by making you look stupid. But I heard similar sentiments from e.g. Louie, and he was never Internet famous like Eliezer was.

Comment author: Lumifer 03 November 2015 06:49:25PM *  1 point [-]

See e.g. Georgia's election to Congress in 2014 -- seven out of 14 Congressmen ran (and won) unopposed. Or Massachusetts -- six out of nine unopposed.

There are also hereditary fiefdoms -- e.g. Newark, NJ.

Comment author: Nornagest 03 November 2015 07:59:46PM *  0 points [-]

At that level, it looks like it mostly happens with incumbents, especially in districts so politically polarized that the other party can't mount a realistic challenge. In these cases, the real challenge to the incumbent, if there is one, would happen at the primary level and the Wikipedia page wouldn't pick it up.

I don't know how common primary-level challenges are. I wouldn't expect them to be universal, but I did see at least one entry on that page (Ralph Hall, for Texas' fourth district) where the candidate defeated an incumbent in the primary and then went on to win the general election unopposed.

Comment author: Romashka 27 October 2015 04:30:44PM 1 point [-]

Correcting the problem is required, but its expected efficiency is way lower than solving it. Or, sometimes, even just tolerating it.

For example, we've just had regional elections, and in the village where I live, there was exactly one candidate to choose from. Problem? Yes. Anybody really against it? No.

Comment author: Nornagest 03 November 2015 06:39:38PM *  0 points [-]

It's not too uncommon for candidates to run unopposed in local, sometimes even state, elections in the US. It's not the norm, exactly, but every so often you get an office where only one person has the time, interest, and availability to mount a serious campaign.

Comment author: Viliam 28 October 2015 09:01:26AM *  3 points [-]

Once I heard a debate about fantasy literature, how culture impacts the world building.

In Western fantasy -- think Tolkien's Middle Earth -- you have the good kingdom on one end of the map (their backs are protected by the ocean, they only have to fight on one front), the evil kingdom is on the other side of the map, the heroes fight and despite all the complications they ultimately win.

In Eastern European fantasy -- think Sapkowski's Witcher -- you have the more-or-less good kingdom in the middle, surrounded by evil kingdoms (often much larger) on all sides; victory is impossible, the heroes fight to survive yet another day, and they consider themselves lucky when they do.

I would add that in Russian fantasy -- think Lukyanenko's Night Watch -- the balance between good and evil is considered a fact of life and no one even tries to change it anymore, both live in the same kingdom; the good guys only wake up when the balance seems to shift too much on the side of evil.

So yeah, culture has an unconscious impact on optimism / pesimism.

Comment author: Nornagest 03 November 2015 06:33:36PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not sure about grand strategy, but I've definitely noticed that attitudes toward government, even that of the nominal good guys, are way more cynical in Eastern European (including Russian) fantasy. The arms of government it touches on often also strike me as more modern, involving things like special forces and organized espionage in otherwise medieval settings, but that might just be because I'm more used to the anachronisms in Western fantasy.

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