This is presented in such a way that I’m suspicious there’s something deeper than the question (which I tried to answer in a straightforward way) that’s bugging you about comment threads for a specific type or topic (or perhaps author or style) of post.
You imply that people are upset or think something’s wrong, but I don’t actually know if you agree or not, nor what information you’re really looking for with this question. This may be one of those (surprisingly common, and anathema to typical rationalist-wannabe nerds like myself) cases where you really can’t start with general solutions to specific problems, even if it looks like the problems are very similar and should have a shared cause and repeatable solution. You have to address an actual real instance of the problem half a dozen to a few thousand times before those useful generalizations can be made.
What bugs me is when people who ostensibly aspire to understand reality better let their sensitivity get in the way, and let their feelings colour the reality of how their ideas are being received. It seems to me this should be a basic skill of debiasing that people would employ if they were as serious about being effective or rational thinkers as they claim to be. If there is anything that bugs me you’re suspicious of, it’s that.
Typically, I agree with an OP who is upset about the low quality of negative comments, but I disagree with how upset they get about it. The things they say as a result are often inaccurate. For example, people will say because of a few comments worth of low-quality negative feedback on a post that’s otherwise decently upvoted that negative reception is typical of LW, or the EA Forum. They may not be satisfied with the reception they’ve received on an article. That’s just a different claim than their reception was extremely negative.
I don’t agree with how upset people are getting, though I do to think they’re typically correct the quality of some responses to their posts is disappointingly low. I wasn’t looking for a solution to a problem. I was asking an open-ended question to seek answers that would explain some behaviour on others’ part that doesn’t fully make sense to me. Some other answers I’ve gotten are just people speaking from their own experience, like G Gordon, and that’s fine by me too.
This is presented in such a way that I’m suspicious there’s something deeper than the question (which I tried to answer in a straightforward way) that’s bugging you about comment threads for a specific type or topic (or perhaps author or style) of post.
You imply that people are upset or think something’s wrong, but I don’t actually know if you agree or not, nor what information you’re really looking for with this question. This may be one of those (surprisingly common, and anathema to typical rationalist-wannabe nerds like myself) cases where you really can’t start with general solutions to specific problems, even if it looks like the problems are very similar and should have a shared cause and repeatable solution. You have to address an actual real instance of the problem half a dozen to a few thousand times before those useful generalizations can be made.
What bugs me is when people who ostensibly aspire to understand reality better let their sensitivity get in the way, and let their feelings colour the reality of how their ideas are being received. It seems to me this should be a basic skill of debiasing that people would employ if they were as serious about being effective or rational thinkers as they claim to be. If there is anything that bugs me you’re suspicious of, it’s that.
Typically, I agree with an OP who is upset about the low quality of negative comments, but I disagree with how upset they get about it. The things they say as a result are often inaccurate. For example, people will say because of a few comments worth of low-quality negative feedback on a post that’s otherwise decently upvoted that negative reception is typical of LW, or the EA Forum. They may not be satisfied with the reception they’ve received on an article. That’s just a different claim than their reception was extremely negative.
I don’t agree with how upset people are getting, though I do to think they’re typically correct the quality of some responses to their posts is disappointingly low. I wasn’t looking for a solution to a problem. I was asking an open-ended question to seek answers that would explain some behaviour on others’ part that doesn’t fully make sense to me. Some other answers I’ve gotten are just people speaking from their own experience, like G Gordon, and that’s fine by me too.