The fact that two blatant ad hominem comments have positive karma is very very suspicious. How much effort would it be to figure out if there is a voting ring problem or puppet account problem?
No, these two though mostly the first. I highly doubt that either one would have had positive karma on LW one year ago. I’m not only suspicious because of these comments though.
Yup, this comment by VoiceOfRa in particular is something I would pay most attention to. When I originally saw it, it was below the threshhold for comments, and had negative six karma. Next time I saw it, it had positive 4 karma. Since attention was drawn to it, it went to positive 2 karma. Still, I have a lot of trouble believing actual Less Wrongers went below the threshhold, then actually upvoted it to positive 4. I would be willing to bet quite a bit of money sock puppetry was involved.
Given the tone of discussions I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a highly bimodal distribution of opinions on the subject—and I’m sure there are loads of LWers who read and vote but don’t comment.
I wouldn’t be surprised either by bimodal distribution, but I have a strong probabilistic estimate that people won’t click on below the fold comments just to read and upvote them. This is the reason for my statement of being willing to bet quite a bit of money on sock puppetry-style activities, either direct sock puppets or voting ring. I don’t take making bets lightly :-)
Seriously, Gleb tried to make arguments based on his credentials as an academic researcher and then complained when the worthiness of those credentials were questioned.
I am unsure;
I believe Ra asked for evidence of what Gleb had said
followed by Gleb declaring his academic status as evidence enough to be an authority on .
This led Ra to criticize his academic status.
While it is true that Gleb is an academic; it is also true that “because I said so” is not a good enough answer to a request for more information(especially not here on LW) (I am unsure if the request was polite or not)(I am also unsure of the exact wording of Gleb’s response). I am unsure as to the state of that whole thread;
Ra could probably compile the best history as he is right in the thick of it.
It could certainly be said that adressing the arguments is the most significant thing, not the person who made it. If the arguments are not clear enough to address; That would lead to asking for more evidence and lead us to here and now. I am unclear as to all the details to be able to understand this all.
By my reading of that thread, he was not leaning on his own authority but on that of an academic consensus. James Miller replied by claiming to distrust academia in general on the matter, and mentioned relevant incentives that might push them towards an incorrect conclusion. Gleb replied that “peer review is peer review”. Up to that point, everyone was being reasonable.
Then VoiceOfRa jumped in, was very rude and seemed to thoroughly misunderstand what was going on. See this comment where he says:
For example, you’ve claimed severaltimes that people should believe you because you are an academic historian.
But both of those links lead to comments by Gleb which link to sources!
Do you consider my credibility as an academic historian to be evidence?
Before seeing that comment I was confused as to whether Ra was talking about words (that Gleb said) to the effect of that or literally those words; now I see it was those words exactly.
this thread also brings to light something interesting:
Gleb: Lol, fair enough. You caught me well on that one. Let me update my statement to being unwilling to summarize whole books.
but then Gleb failed to actually add information from the book.
While I expect that the book holds claims to the effect of what Gleb intended to say; I feel like he didn’t do his full effort in supporting his claims; instead relying on his “credibility as an academic historian” to try to pass as the truth, as well as getting away without actually answering the question for providing more information.
I genuinely do not care about the topic; I admit that Gleb put in some effort to try to help offer insight to people; but I feel he did not put in the right effort in the right places, leading it to look like he was relying on his “credibility”. I can’t fault Ra for jumping on the issue; I can fault Ra for not doing it as gently and in good faith (and steelmanned) as possible. But from there; Gleb refused to continue the discussion and cited it as a personal attack.
looks like all parties at fault for that mess.
It’s now probably worthwhile suggesting a strategy for not having this happen again in the future:
I wrote one up recently here:
The fact that two blatant ad hominem comments have positive karma is very very suspicious. How much effort would it be to figure out if there is a voting ring problem or puppet account problem?
Is one of them mine, by any chance?
No, these two though mostly the first. I highly doubt that either one would have had positive karma on LW one year ago. I’m not only suspicious because of these comments though.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cx9j http://lesswrong.com/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cwuz
Edit: these had higher karma when I linked to them, for reasons that are obvious in hindsight.
Yup, this comment by VoiceOfRa in particular is something I would pay most attention to. When I originally saw it, it was below the threshhold for comments, and had negative six karma. Next time I saw it, it had positive 4 karma. Since attention was drawn to it, it went to positive 2 karma. Still, I have a lot of trouble believing actual Less Wrongers went below the threshhold, then actually upvoted it to positive 4. I would be willing to bet quite a bit of money sock puppetry was involved.
Given the tone of discussions I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a highly bimodal distribution of opinions on the subject—and I’m sure there are loads of LWers who read and vote but don’t comment.
I wouldn’t be surprised either by bimodal distribution, but I have a strong probabilistic estimate that people won’t click on below the fold comments just to read and upvote them. This is the reason for my statement of being willing to bet quite a bit of money on sock puppetry-style activities, either direct sock puppets or voting ring. I don’t take making bets lightly :-)
Seriously, Gleb tried to make arguments based on his credentials as an academic researcher and then complained when the worthiness of those credentials were questioned.
I’m with Gleb on that one—it’s much more appropriate to address the quality of his arguments rather than his credentials.
I am unsure; I believe Ra asked for evidence of what Gleb had said followed by Gleb declaring his academic status as evidence enough to be an authority on . This led Ra to criticize his academic status.
While it is true that Gleb is an academic; it is also true that “because I said so” is not a good enough answer to a request for more information(especially not here on LW) (I am unsure if the request was polite or not)(I am also unsure of the exact wording of Gleb’s response). I am unsure as to the state of that whole thread;
Ra could probably compile the best history as he is right in the thick of it.
It could certainly be said that adressing the arguments is the most significant thing, not the person who made it. If the arguments are not clear enough to address; That would lead to asking for more evidence and lead us to here and now. I am unclear as to all the details to be able to understand this all.
By my reading of that thread, he was not leaning on his own authority but on that of an academic consensus. James Miller replied by claiming to distrust academia in general on the matter, and mentioned relevant incentives that might push them towards an incorrect conclusion. Gleb replied that “peer review is peer review”. Up to that point, everyone was being reasonable.
Then VoiceOfRa jumped in, was very rude and seemed to thoroughly misunderstand what was going on. See this comment where he says:
But both of those links lead to comments by Gleb which link to sources!
this comment: (By Gleb)
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cwzh
includes the line:
Before seeing that comment I was confused as to whether Ra was talking about words (that Gleb said) to the effect of that or literally those words; now I see it was those words exactly.
this thread also brings to light something interesting:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cx6p
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzw/link_a_rational_response_to_the_paris_attacks_and/cx75
but then Gleb failed to actually add information from the book.
While I expect that the book holds claims to the effect of what Gleb intended to say; I feel like he didn’t do his full effort in supporting his claims; instead relying on his “credibility as an academic historian” to try to pass as the truth, as well as getting away without actually answering the question for providing more information.
I genuinely do not care about the topic; I admit that Gleb put in some effort to try to help offer insight to people; but I feel he did not put in the right effort in the right places, leading it to look like he was relying on his “credibility”. I can’t fault Ra for jumping on the issue; I can fault Ra for not doing it as gently and in good faith (and steelmanned) as possible. But from there; Gleb refused to continue the discussion and cited it as a personal attack.
looks like all parties at fault for that mess.
It’s now probably worthwhile suggesting a strategy for not having this happen again in the future: I wrote one up recently here:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mzz/open_thread_nov_23_nov_29_2015/cwyl
On the part of Ra:
1: clean up the statement so that it is harder to take offensively (steelman)
On the part of Gleb:
2: encourage less personal offence from the original statement
both sides are needed to make discussions more productive. Either person could have put in more effort to improve the state of the discussion.
As an explicitly specific instruction: When you are feeling like a comment was an attack on you;
quote it;
say “did you mean X, otherwise that sounded like an attack; can you clarify?”
where X is a version of the statement that does not hold the attack; but still holds a debatable point.
Something like that Gleb replied to James_Miller with a somewhat ridiculous assertion along with:
I replied that he had greatly damaged his credibility with his assertion. At which point Gleb flipped out about ad hominem.