You know something is important when you're willing to let someone else take the credit if that's what it takes to get it done.

-Seth Godin

I am surprised to see a lack of attention to parallels between empathy in a tribal setting and conscientiousness in an individual tribesman in discussions here. It is a scary setting we find ourselves in when we all can be agreeable through sites like Kiva and Kickstarter, neurotic through sites like 4chan and reddit, extroverted through services like Facebook and flickr, open through services like Google; and yet there is not one place that translates in a tribal way to experiencing any form of conscientiousness online today.

I am driven to understand this to mean that there is a very limited scope of conscientiousness in the physical world at large today. Is this lack of accountability and self-discipline not what is being addressed when we thumb up a post like this? I want these parallels to be discussed here, but my wherewithal in forums such as this is limited.

Where can we go to share, develop, and experience a sense of Jiminy Cricket today in either world actual or the nets? If there is not a place left where this sense of organized social self is available in a rich format, I can then only encourage people to continue to try and change others' ways of thinking, if only to be sure conscientiousness' utility survives our tribes' rapid-fire cultural shifts to one day prove more effective and less invasive than the current orthodoxy nyan describes.

The utility function is not up for grabs. If you value love, this has nothing to do with your beliefs. Valuing love can trigger biases, such as wishful thinking, but it is not of itself a bias. It's neither rational nor irrational, but arational.

I get the first three (fun to read upvote, novel or educational upvote, and downvote)

but what's the last button mean?

"I agree to follow this course of action or policy and / or I think this person's opinion is correct?"

And how would we explain to new users that it isn't what it looks like...also, I'm wondering what context this image was originally created in...

On a serious note, we don't want to get too complicated...but I wouldn't object to a three button system. "Like" "Dislike" and "I personally learned something new, considered a novel idea, or updated an opinion as a result of this article or comment".

Because while I tend to like reading well written articles which phrase my opinions more articulately than I myself could, I'd also like to be able to bring up the more difficult and rewarding pieces on command.

I'm guessing since we've apparently established that the average user here is gifted, we can trust people to use the "novel/learn/update" button correctly and with appropriate frugality. It would also be good for feedback purposes.

So, on Reddit I notice that asking after the "most popular" posts usually brings up the least intellectually stimulating content, presumably because easy content is processed and upvoted faster. Even in a high quality subreddit, clicking the "top all time" icon brings up memes and vapid statements.

Now, while I have to say that all these Lesswrong posts were definitely high quality and worth my time to read, I do think that among these, the most popular posts and articles were not among the most thought provoking ones that we have here.

Instead, the most popular posts and articles here basically restate statements which I already understand and rather strongly agree with. Yes, I think they are insightful, but that is primarily because they mirror my own pre-formed views on the matters being discussed and like most people I tend to find my own opinions insightful. Whereas, those posts which actually gave me a novel idea to play with were not necessarily the most popular.

Note that this is not a criticism against the top articles themselves (I enjoyed reading them immensely). I'm just pointing out a trait inherent in user-generated moderation (up/down votes). The top content tend to be shallower and more agreeable, whereas more substantial or controversial content tends not to float to the top as quickly.

I think the reason that this happens (in general) is that shallow content can be processed quickly by the reader, and it is easy to judge whether or not you like it. With more substantial content, it takes a while to process and it is more difficult to decide whether or not you like it because it is more sophisticated. So even though nobody really likes reddit internet memes, they float to the top because they are good at getting votes.

What's interesting is that lesswrong users love substantial content and set quite a high standard. The users here will downvote anything which is too shallow. So our Lesswrong variant on the "internet meme" (uncontroversial, easy to follow generalizations that we all agree with) are still very well written and a pleasure to read.

It's just an interesting dynamic and I thought I'd point it out.

I think of these articles, the only one which really taught me something was "logical pinpointing" (explaining first and second order logic, and introducing the viewpoint that axioms as "pin down" concepts rather than construct them) but that was all the way at #8.

That's not to say it was the best article here of course - just that I personally was either already familiar with or had independently arrived at the ideas described within the others. That particular article's novelty is probably peculiar to me (quite a few of the other articles would have been novel to me four years ago, for example) but I suspect that if everyone here were to list which articles on lesswrong taught them something they didn't already know, only a small portion of that list would end up on top (once adjusting for the fact that top articles are viewed more often)

If this is to be taken as a sort of prophetic/religious statement that will certainly be believed, how about this:

"It is better to rely on the labour of machines than the labour of beasts, and better to rely on the labour of beasts than the labour of man".

(Based on the idea that historically, technological progress was often disincentivized by the abundance of cheap/slave labour).