For myself I find there is something really disheartening about presenting ideas in a post and then seeing it downvoted and then in the comments learning it was downvoted because a person disagreed with you because they didn’t like your conclusions or what they thought you wrote or what they fear was implied by what you wrote rather than that you did something that worked against the broader conversations we are trying to have around here. It’s very hard to think things through for yourself and say things that might be wrong, and I think it creates incentives that reduce exploration of ideas in favor of refinement of existing ideas (basically a move toward scholasticism) when voting causes people to feel punished when they do that.
As you note, it’s especially frustrating when a comment on your post gets higher votes than your post did and that comment is a poorly reasoned objection to your post or a refutation against a strawman versions of what you said. For me this often happens by my attempting to lay out some complex, nuanced idea that was going to be difficult to explain no matter how I did it, and then someone objecting to what I perceive to be a simplified, rough version of it. And when that gets a lot of upvotes it feels like a strong signal that all attempts to say things that aren’t simple extensions of what people already believe will be rejected (I especially feel this way because my recollection is that the worst of these cases usually involve hitting rationalist applause lights and then getting a lot of “applause” for doing so without actually saying much of anything).
None of this is to deny that I couldn’t be a better writer or have better ideas or that I don’t want critical engagement with my writing, only to say that it stings when you see voting patterns that feel more like boos and yays than voting patterns that feel like some recognition of what is most worth engaging with on the site. I would be pretty happy if someone commented on my posts raising well thought out objections or asking clarifying questions that lead me to realize I was mistaken and that got a lot of upvotes, rather than something getting a lot of upvotes that feels like it’s just scoring points against me and doesn’t really try to engage me or my ideas. I suspect that it’s only thanks to my now strong psychological resilience that I keep on posting on LW, and I worry about who else is being silenced because they don’t want to subject themselves to the harsh judgement of the crowd.
I suspect that it’s only thanks to my now strong psychological resilience that I keep on posting on LW, and I worry about who else is being silenced because they don’t want to subject themselves to the harsh judgement of the crowd.
I sort of agree, but this tends to be holding the system of voting stable and assumes you’re making tradeoffs along the efficiency frontier. There are probably ways to pull the voting system sideways such that you probably can optimize for more of what you care about that’s currently being captured in this notion by “contrarian”ism that exists as a result of compressing ourselves down into a simple, generalized up/down vote system.
This is still good advice, though, with respect to the current system.
Yeah. Upvotes/downvotes act as reward/punishment respectively. So the problem with voting to express agreement/disagreement is that you are rewarding people for expressing common views and punishing them for expressing uncommon views. Which can lead to an echo chamber.
But it’s still valuable to know whether people agree or disagree! So I suspect the ideal voting system would separate out the “more of this”/”less of this” axis from the “agree”/”disagree” axis. You could have people fill out text boxes anonymously to explain their “more of this”/”less of this” votes, then do text clustering once you had enough filled-out text boxes, then figure out the top 10 reasons people choose “more of this”/”less of this” and replace the text boxes with dropdowns. To guard against misuse, you could weight dropdown selections from users who tend to agree with trusted moderators more heavily.
For myself I find there is something really disheartening about presenting ideas in a post and then seeing it downvoted and then in the comments learning it was downvoted because a person disagreed with you because they didn’t like your conclusions or what they thought you wrote or what they fear was implied by what you wrote rather than that you did something that worked against the broader conversations we are trying to have around here. It’s very hard to think things through for yourself and say things that might be wrong, and I think it creates incentives that reduce exploration of ideas in favor of refinement of existing ideas (basically a move toward scholasticism) when voting causes people to feel punished when they do that.
As you note, it’s especially frustrating when a comment on your post gets higher votes than your post did and that comment is a poorly reasoned objection to your post or a refutation against a strawman versions of what you said. For me this often happens by my attempting to lay out some complex, nuanced idea that was going to be difficult to explain no matter how I did it, and then someone objecting to what I perceive to be a simplified, rough version of it. And when that gets a lot of upvotes it feels like a strong signal that all attempts to say things that aren’t simple extensions of what people already believe will be rejected (I especially feel this way because my recollection is that the worst of these cases usually involve hitting rationalist applause lights and then getting a lot of “applause” for doing so without actually saying much of anything).
None of this is to deny that I couldn’t be a better writer or have better ideas or that I don’t want critical engagement with my writing, only to say that it stings when you see voting patterns that feel more like boos and yays than voting patterns that feel like some recognition of what is most worth engaging with on the site. I would be pretty happy if someone commented on my posts raising well thought out objections or asking clarifying questions that lead me to realize I was mistaken and that got a lot of upvotes, rather than something getting a lot of upvotes that feels like it’s just scoring points against me and doesn’t really try to engage me or my ideas. I suspect that it’s only thanks to my now strong psychological resilience that I keep on posting on LW, and I worry about who else is being silenced because they don’t want to subject themselves to the harsh judgement of the crowd.
If you never get downvoted, you’re not being contrarian enough.
I sort of agree, but this tends to be holding the system of voting stable and assumes you’re making tradeoffs along the efficiency frontier. There are probably ways to pull the voting system sideways such that you probably can optimize for more of what you care about that’s currently being captured in this notion by “contrarian”ism that exists as a result of compressing ourselves down into a simple, generalized up/down vote system.
This is still good advice, though, with respect to the current system.
Yeah. Upvotes/downvotes act as reward/punishment respectively. So the problem with voting to express agreement/disagreement is that you are rewarding people for expressing common views and punishing them for expressing uncommon views. Which can lead to an echo chamber.
But it’s still valuable to know whether people agree or disagree! So I suspect the ideal voting system would separate out the “more of this”/”less of this” axis from the “agree”/”disagree” axis. You could have people fill out text boxes anonymously to explain their “more of this”/”less of this” votes, then do text clustering once you had enough filled-out text boxes, then figure out the top 10 reasons people choose “more of this”/”less of this” and replace the text boxes with dropdowns. To guard against misuse, you could weight dropdown selections from users who tend to agree with trusted moderators more heavily.