Gone are 11 old reacts who were getting little use, are redundant with the new reacts, and/or in my opinion weren’t being used well (for example, “I’d bet this is false” almost never turned into a bet as I’d hoped, but was primarily used to disagree with added emphasis).
Reacts are a rich way to interact with a body of text, allowing many people to give information about comments, claims, and subclaims more efficiently than writing full comments, and they’re something I love that we have on LessWrong (kudos to Raemon for building them initially!). They’re also a way that people learn our culture – I will re-use Jimrandomh’s classic meme on this topic.
I encourage you to look out for opportunities to use theses new reacts in the coming weeks, to give them a shot at life! We shall see which of these reacts get good use, and whether the use is good for truthseeking. I expect some of them will not, and will later be replaced by even newer reacts.
Feedback on the new reacts is invited, as are proposals for other reacts potentially worth adding.
P.S. There is also a stub of a wiki page on reacts, I would love it if people filled it out and gave LessWrong-culture explanations for the reacts where there is indeed more to say (e.g. “ADDC” comes from this thread).
I am kind of interested in limiting the use of that react to once-per-month, so that it really means something when it gets used. Not sure whether to actually try this.
I like the idea of limited-use actions in forums / social media in general, seems like an unexplored space: limited-used strong reacts, limited-use emotes, etc.
Everything2 did this with votes. I think the “votes per day” limit used to be more progressive by user level, but it’s possible that’s me misremembering; looking at it now, it seems like they have a flat 50/day once you reach the level where voting is unlocked at all. Here’s what looks like their current voting/experience system doc. (Note that E2 has been kind of unstable for me, so if you get a server error, try again after a few minutes.)
I’m very happy with most of these choices. I’m confused about “locally valid” and “locally invalid” being removed, though. It would feel weird to me to use “weak argument” and “strong argument” in their stead, since weak and strong connote doing different amounts of work, while valid and invalid denote logical applicability.
For one, it’s very rare to need to point out that an argument is “locally valid”, so the reaction is one of the least used reacts we have. For two, I think “locally invalid” is actually often not very helpful in a good discussion? Most arguments people make aren’t deductively sound, they’re probabilistic, and those who disagree are disagreeing with either the strength of evidence, or (rarer) the direction that evidence points. It’s not that you made a mistake of predicate logic, it’s that I think your evidence doesn’t really support your conclusion, and that’s a more substantive disagreement. It seems to me that the relevant thing is often that the argument seems weak to the reader, rather than the author’s arguments not making sense.
I am still sad about losing them as part of culture setting, but overall I think they were either not worth the space or not used well, and we still have plenty of good LessWrong culture setting in the reacts palette.
“Locally invalid” was a specific react for highlighting the part of a comment that makes a self-contained mistake, different from “Disagree”. A faulty step is not centrally a “weak argument”, as it’s sometimes not any kind of argument. And discussion often gestures at a claim without providing any sort of evidence or giving any argument, the evidence or the argument is for the recipients to reconstruct for themselves.
I don’t have examples easily to hand, but my impression (sadly) was that it was too often misused, for when someone disagreed with an argument, to mark it as locally invalid rather than simply disagreeing.
Perhaps if people learn to use “weak argument” instead in those situations, I might add it back in later, or perhaps I can find a secret third react which better gets them what they are looking for (e.g. “I don’t think that this follows” or “I reject this step of the argument”) that they would correctly use even if “locally invalid” is added back in.
On the “I bet this is false” react, a wild & likely unworkable idea (which I will say anyway) would be to hook that react up to a manifold market for which the reacter must bet “no” in.
“Too Combative” and “Too Sneering” seem really similar to me?
Sad to see “Insightful” go, it might not have been used that much, but that was part of the reason why it felt valuable. If you saw that react, then probably the person who’d used it thought that there was something exceptionally insightful about the comment.
I think I semi-agree with your perception, but I did have a recent experience to the contrary: when I did a throwaway post about suddenly noticing a distinction in the reaction UI, I found it very odd that some people marked the central bit “Insightful”. Like, maybe it’s useful to them that I pointed it out, but it’s a piece of UI that was (presumably) specifically designed that way by someone already! There’s no new synthesis going on or anything; it’s not insightful. (Or maybe people wanted to use it as a test of the UI element, but then why not the paperclip or the saw-that eyes?)
I think I regularly want to say goodbye at the end of a thread, but I don’t think I regularly want to tell people that the thread is no longer a good use of my time. To some extent they’re logically similar but I think the choice to leave a dinner saying “Marginal time at this dinner is no longer worth the opportunity cost for me” is kind of silly, and saying “I just wanted to say goodbye, I’m headed out now!” is standard and normal.
Oh, apparently I misinterpreted the meaning of “bowing out”, as I’m not a native English speaker. Anyway, I just want to register my opinion that I thought the “not worth getting into?” react was good in itself.
I think “nitpick” would generate better common knowledge for people as to its meaning if the hover trivial inconvenience was removed, by renaming it to “phrase is nitpick”, so as to avoid a usage forming that interprets it as “reacter nitpicks phrase”
I want elaborate back, its purpose seems unreplaced
It’s use was in the bottom third of reacts, and my honest recollection is that it never actually caused elaborating to happen, so I felt comfortable removing it. I have been exploring design space for a react that is more like “I would be interested to read more about this from you!” which feels a bit less demanding and more like something good will happen to the person if they write another comment or even a post on it, which I would like to add if I can find a good design for it (both a good visual image and a good short name).
Interesting, I hadn’t conceived that “nitpick” might be used that way. I don’t know if changing it to “This is a nitpick” would actually solve the problem (perhaps it would be read self-referentially). Perhaps I’ll think of a better idea tomorrow, but if not I’ll wait to see if it actually gets misused.
I think “Elaborate” would be more useful (i.e., more likely to actually induce an elaboration on the point being reacted at) if its corresponding notification was grouped not with karma updates and other reacts (which people get notified about in a batch, daily, weekly, etc.), but rather with the normal notifs like “so-and-so replied to your comment/post” or “you received a message from so-and-so”. (Probably the same for the new “Let’s make a bet!” react.)
But this would most likely require doing something somewhat inelegant and complicated to the codebase, so it may not be worth it, atm at least.
I also feel a bit sad about “Elaborate?” being gone, sometimes someone makes an interesting side-statement and I want to hear more from them about that, which is when I use the react. But this is a weak expression of longing.
Announcing new reacts!
The reacts palette has 17 new reacts:
Gone are 11 old reacts who were getting little use, are redundant with the new reacts, and/or in my opinion weren’t being used well (for example, “I’d bet this is false” almost never turned into a bet as I’d hoped, but was primarily used to disagree with added emphasis).
Reacts are a rich way to interact with a body of text, allowing many people to give information about comments, claims, and subclaims more efficiently than writing full comments, and they’re something I love that we have on LessWrong (kudos to Raemon for building them initially!). They’re also a way that people learn our culture – I will re-use Jimrandomh’s classic meme on this topic.
I encourage you to look out for opportunities to use theses new reacts in the coming weeks, to give them a shot at life! We shall see which of these reacts get good use, and whether the use is good for truthseeking. I expect some of them will not, and will later be replaced by even newer reacts.
Feedback on the new reacts is invited, as are proposals for other reacts potentially worth adding.
P.S. There is also a stub of a wiki page on reacts, I would love it if people filled it out and gave LessWrong-culture explanations for the reacts where there is indeed more to say (e.g. “ADDC” comes from this thread).
I love the “I beseech you” react picture! (For those who are confused: link)
I am kind of interested in limiting the use of that react to once-per-month, so that it really means something when it gets used. Not sure whether to actually try this.
I like the idea of limited-use actions in forums / social media in general, seems like an unexplored space: limited-used strong reacts, limited-use emotes, etc.
Everything2 did this with votes. I think the “votes per day” limit used to be more progressive by user level, but it’s possible that’s me misremembering; looking at it now, it seems like they have a flat 50/day once you reach the level where voting is unlocked at all. Here’s what looks like their current voting/experience system doc. (Note that E2 has been kind of unstable for me, so if you get a server error, try again after a few minutes.)
I’m very happy with most of these choices. I’m confused about “locally valid” and “locally invalid” being removed, though. It would feel weird to me to use “weak argument” and “strong argument” in their stead, since weak and strong connote doing different amounts of work, while valid and invalid denote logical applicability.
For one, it’s very rare to need to point out that an argument is “locally valid”, so the reaction is one of the least used reacts we have. For two, I think “locally invalid” is actually often not very helpful in a good discussion? Most arguments people make aren’t deductively sound, they’re probabilistic, and those who disagree are disagreeing with either the strength of evidence, or (rarer) the direction that evidence points. It’s not that you made a mistake of predicate logic, it’s that I think your evidence doesn’t really support your conclusion, and that’s a more substantive disagreement. It seems to me that the relevant thing is often that the argument seems weak to the reader, rather than the author’s arguments not making sense.
I am still sad about losing them as part of culture setting, but overall I think they were either not worth the space or not used well, and we still have plenty of good LessWrong culture setting in the reacts palette.
“Locally invalid” was a specific react for highlighting the part of a comment that makes a self-contained mistake, different from “Disagree”. A faulty step is not centrally a “weak argument”, as it’s sometimes not any kind of argument. And discussion often gestures at a claim without providing any sort of evidence or giving any argument, the evidence or the argument is for the recipients to reconstruct for themselves.
I don’t have examples easily to hand, but my impression (sadly) was that it was too often misused, for when someone disagreed with an argument, to mark it as locally invalid rather than simply disagreeing.
Perhaps if people learn to use “weak argument” instead in those situations, I might add it back in later, or perhaps I can find a secret third react which better gets them what they are looking for (e.g. “I don’t think that this follows” or “I reject this step of the argument”) that they would correctly use even if “locally invalid” is added back in.
On the “I bet this is false” react, a wild & likely unworkable idea (which I will say anyway) would be to hook that react up to a manifold market for which the reacter must bet “no” in.
Oops, I forgot that I actually added 18 reacts! We now also have “Sad”.
“Too Combative” and “Too Sneering” seem really similar to me?
Sad to see “Insightful” go, it might not have been used that much, but that was part of the reason why it felt valuable. If you saw that react, then probably the person who’d used it thought that there was something exceptionally insightful about the comment.
I think the light bulb icon is the correct icon for “Good point!”. If I can find another good image for insightful I’ll probably add it back
I also liked Insightful, though agree with all other changes.
I think I semi-agree with your perception, but I did have a recent experience to the contrary: when I did a throwaway post about suddenly noticing a distinction in the reaction UI, I found it very odd that some people marked the central bit “Insightful”. Like, maybe it’s useful to them that I pointed it out, but it’s a piece of UI that was (presumably) specifically designed that way by someone already! There’s no new synthesis going on or anything; it’s not insightful. (Or maybe people wanted to use it as a test of the UI element, but then why not the paperclip or the saw-that eyes?)
Doesn’t “not worth getting into?” sound better than “bowing out”?
I think I regularly want to say goodbye at the end of a thread, but I don’t think I regularly want to tell people that the thread is no longer a good use of my time. To some extent they’re logically similar but I think the choice to leave a dinner saying “Marginal time at this dinner is no longer worth the opportunity cost for me” is kind of silly, and saying “I just wanted to say goodbye, I’m headed out now!” is standard and normal.
Oh, apparently I misinterpreted the meaning of “bowing out”, as I’m not a native English speaker. Anyway, I just want to register my opinion that I thought the “not worth getting into?” react was good in itself.
yay!!
I think “nitpick” would generate better common knowledge for people as to its meaning if the hover trivial inconvenience was removed, by renaming it to “phrase is nitpick”, so as to avoid a usage forming that interprets it as “reacter nitpicks phrase”
I want elaborate back, its purpose seems unreplaced
It’s use was in the bottom third of reacts, and my honest recollection is that it never actually caused elaborating to happen, so I felt comfortable removing it. I have been exploring design space for a react that is more like “I would be interested to read more about this from you!” which feels a bit less demanding and more like something good will happen to the person if they write another comment or even a post on it, which I would like to add if I can find a good design for it (both a good visual image and a good short name).
Interesting, I hadn’t conceived that “nitpick” might be used that way. I don’t know if changing it to “This is a nitpick” would actually solve the problem (perhaps it would be read self-referentially). Perhaps I’ll think of a better idea tomorrow, but if not I’ll wait to see if it actually gets misused.
Epistemic status: Very sleepy while I write this.
I think “Elaborate” would be more useful (i.e., more likely to actually induce an elaboration on the point being reacted at) if its corresponding notification was grouped not with karma updates and other reacts (which people get notified about in a batch, daily, weekly, etc.), but rather with the normal notifs like “so-and-so replied to your comment/post” or “you received a message from so-and-so”. (Probably the same for the new “Let’s make a bet!” react.)
But this would most likely require doing something somewhat inelegant and complicated to the codebase, so it may not be worth it, atm at least.
It might also work better if it’s use was rate limited, so that it was actually a costly signal.
I guess. But I would think the bigger issue is that people don’t notice.
I also feel a bit sad about “Elaborate?” being gone, sometimes someone makes an interesting side-statement and I want to hear more from them about that, which is when I use the react. But this is a weak expression of longing.