Because you make few assertions of substance, there is a lot of empty space (where people, depending on their mood, may insert either unrealistically charitable or unrealistically uncharitable reconstructions of reasoning) and not a lot of specific content for anyone to disagree with. In contrast, if I make 10 very concrete and substantive suggestions in a post, and most people like 9 of them but hate the 10th, that could make them very reluctant to upvote the post as a whole, lest their vote be taken as a blanket endorsement for every claim.
Because the post is vague and humorous, people leave it feeling vaguely happy and not in a mood to pick it apart. Expressing this vague happiness as an upvote reifies it and makes it more intense. People like ‘liking’ things they like.
The post is actually useful, as a way of popularizing some deeper and more substantive meta-ethical and practical points. Some LessWrongers may be tired of endlessly arguing over which theory is most ideal, and instead hunger for better popularizations and summaries of the extant philosophical progress we’ve already made, so that we can start peddling those views to the masses. They may view your post as an important step in that Voltairean process, even if it doesn’t advance the distinct project of constructing the substance-for-future-popularization in the first place.
Meta-ethics is hard. There are very few easy answers, and there’s a lot of disagreement. Uncertainty and disagreement, and in general lack of closure, create a lot of unpleasant dissonance. Your article helps us pretend that we can ignore those problems, which alleviates the dissonance and makes us feel better. This would help explain why applause-lighting posts in areas like meta-ethics or the hard problem of consciousness see better results than applause-lighting posts in areas where substantive progress is easier.
The post invites people to oversimplify their utility calculations via the simple dichotomy ‘is it awesome, or isn’t it?‘. Whether or not your post is useful, informative, insightful ,etc., it is quite clearly ‘awesome,’ as the word is ordinarily used. So your post encourages people to simplify their evaluation procedure in a way that favors the post itself.
Because you make few assertions of substance, there is a lot of empty space (where people, depending on their mood, may insert either unrealistically charitable or unrealistically uncharitable reconstructions of reasoning) and not a lot of specific content for anyone to disagree with. In contrast, if I make 10 very concrete and substantive suggestions in a post, and most people like 9 of them but hate the 10th, that could make them very reluctant to upvote the post as a whole, lest their vote be taken as a blanket endorsement for every claim.
Because the post is vague and humorous, people leave it feeling vaguely happy and not in a mood to pick it apart. Expressing this vague happiness as an upvote reifies it and makes it more intense. People like ‘liking’ things they like.
The post is actually useful, as a way of popularizing some deeper and more substantive meta-ethical and practical points. Some LessWrongers may be tired of endlessly arguing over which theory is most ideal, and instead hunger for better popularizations and summaries of the extant philosophical progress we’ve already made, so that we can start peddling those views to the masses. They may view your post as an important step in that Voltairean process, even if it doesn’t advance the distinct project of constructing the substance-for-future-popularization in the first place.
Meta-ethics is hard. There are very few easy answers, and there’s a lot of disagreement. Uncertainty and disagreement, and in general lack of closure, create a lot of unpleasant dissonance. Your article helps us pretend that we can ignore those problems, which alleviates the dissonance and makes us feel better. This would help explain why applause-lighting posts in areas like meta-ethics or the hard problem of consciousness see better results than applause-lighting posts in areas where substantive progress is easier.
The post invites people to oversimplify their utility calculations via the simple dichotomy ‘is it awesome, or isn’t it?‘. Whether or not your post is useful, informative, insightful ,etc., it is quite clearly ‘awesome,’ as the word is ordinarily used. So your post encourages people to simplify their evaluation procedure in a way that favors the post itself.