If I hadn’t recently seen that “students fighting segregated prom” story from credible news sources, I’d have considered this part of the story to be nearly conclusive evidence of trolling.
I can imagine some lesswrong users thinking it would be terribly clever for them to create a sock-puppet and “test” how gullible the lesswrong readerbase is via a post like this. If such a case were ever identified I would like to see the user banned by IP rather than rewarded with status and congratulations.
Banning by IP is useless at best and harmful in most cases (where hapless customers of an ISP get the old IP address of a troll). There is no way to prevent attempts to test how gullible we are; therefore we need to be generally immune to all attempts and not only to specific cases or instigators.
I’d estimate a 30% probability (but with a fairly large variance) that at least some elements of this article are inaccurate and an attempt at trolling. The “best” trolls are 90% truth with one or two outrageous elements using the halo effect to gain belief.
CarlShulman’s comment has no satisfactory replies yet. What is the probability that the article’s profound accusations are a) completely true, b) otherwise unreported, and c) first reported on lesswrong? It seems more likely that an actual whistle-blower would choose a more widely read media outlet (Wikileaks even?), and probably more than one. b) and c) could just be my inability to find similar information reported elsewhere. It seems to be fairly common knowledge that the education system is broken but not with the specific detail in the article.
The more widely read the media outlet, the higher the probability of the whistle-blower’s anonymity getting blown.
Once it’s released anywhere the risk of losing anonymity is basically the same in the end. Either it’s a troll and will die here or it’s true and will be disseminated everywhere. Such a strategy would only make sense if the original poster thought that this forum would replicate the research and publish it with no mention of the original source, but that seems more like the kind of thing an investigative journalist would do.
I can imagine some lesswrong users thinking it would be terribly clever for them to create a sock-puppet and “test” how gullible the lesswrong readerbase is via a post like this. If such a case were ever identified I would like to see the user banned by IP rather than rewarded with status and congratulations.
Banning by IP is useless at best and harmful in most cases (where hapless customers of an ISP get the old IP address of a troll). There is no way to prevent attempts to test how gullible we are; therefore we need to be generally immune to all attempts and not only to specific cases or instigators.
I’d estimate a 30% probability (but with a fairly large variance) that at least some elements of this article are inaccurate and an attempt at trolling. The “best” trolls are 90% truth with one or two outrageous elements using the halo effect to gain belief.
CarlShulman’s comment has no satisfactory replies yet. What is the probability that the article’s profound accusations are a) completely true, b) otherwise unreported, and c) first reported on lesswrong? It seems more likely that an actual whistle-blower would choose a more widely read media outlet (Wikileaks even?), and probably more than one. b) and c) could just be my inability to find similar information reported elsewhere. It seems to be fairly common knowledge that the education system is broken but not with the specific detail in the article.
The more widely read the media outlet, the higher the probability of the whistle-blower’s anonymity getting blown.
Once it’s released anywhere the risk of losing anonymity is basically the same in the end. Either it’s a troll and will die here or it’s true and will be disseminated everywhere. Such a strategy would only make sense if the original poster thought that this forum would replicate the research and publish it with no mention of the original source, but that seems more like the kind of thing an investigative journalist would do.
Huh? Why?