If you look at my profile you’d notice I have enough karma to look like a bible salesman. It seems like for whatever reason my comments are not appreciated if not depreciated. The annoying thing is that I’m repeatedly judged (downvoted) but am not given any explanation. Whatever’s supposedly wrong with my comments isn’t even being explained and it keeps happening enopugh for me to realize I’m not getting anything positive from commenting.
Skimming your comment history it seems like the majority of your downvotes comes from expressing views inconsistent with the progressivist narrative on gender. LW now is overloaded with that.
My impression is that the problem isn’t disagreement with, or disapproval of, his views so much as it’s a feeling that (1) some topics he wants to talk about (his success or lack of it with women) don’t really belong here and (2) the manner in which he talks about them is inappropriate. A few examples:
I often feel poly folks are basically epicifiying what I think is “I just wanna fuck”.
(This was in a comment that’s currently at +1-3; there were other not-terribly-impressive things in it, but my guess is that the quoted sentence is what got the downvotes.) So: gratuitous rudeness about poly people (of whom there are a fair number here), expressed in needlessly coarse terms. It doesn’t seem terribly surprising that it got some downvotes. Nothing to do with the progressivist narrative on gender here.
Fucking hell man that’s what I wanted to say to the girl. FUCK THAT BUS.
(This was in a comment that’s at +1-4.) Dumping his own personal frustrations into a discussion about something else. Unnecessary fucking. Again, no progressive narrative required.
Actually, the most-downvoted comments I saw in my quick trawl through UH’s history had nothing to do with gender. For instance: on +1-6 there was a reply to RichardKennaway’s observation that LW has advice on how to start liking things but nothing on how to stop liking things, which I frankly found almost incomprehensible; on +0-4, a complaint about LW having karma-based limits on what you can do; a couple of heavily downvoted comments in a thread that is about gender, but where the downvotes are clearly for UH being pointlessly and contentlessly rude to other people.
My overall impression is that UH’s comments are usually poorly written, frequently dismissive to others without cause, often more concerned with his own personal life than is appropriate in context, sometimes downright incomprehensible, and with a surfeit of “fucking”s that frequently makes him sound like an overwrought teenager. (Sorry, UH, but that’s how it is.) His attitude to women probably doesn’t help (seriously, did you seewhat he wrote to Alicorn?) but I’d be surprised if even the most generous intepretation of “views inconsistent with the progressivist narrative on gender” had those views accounting for more than 5% of his downvotes.
My views are simply what I judge to be the best way to solve a problem in the most efficient manner that generates the most results.
If people disagree with them, that’s fine; but they ought to try and prove me incorrect instead of just giving me a minus one.
Gender is no different and people ought to try and solve problems instead of typical minding or whatever other nonsense they spew rather than solve the fucking problem at hand.
it’s up to you to find the truth, not up to other people to pound it into your head for you.
Your views aren’t really what’s at issue here, but how you are saying what you are saying. A number of times you have resorted to pure ad hominem (and sometimes it’s downright rude). I know you must understand that this is going to be frowned upon on a site like this.
gjm has given a very excellent description of the kinds of things that have been downvoted and why that is likely. It’s well worth a read… it will help you on other sites than this one. From my experience,, LW is a very forgiving group compared to others—where here you get a gentle nudge through a downvote—others will simply spew vitriol your way. I think you shouldn’t interpret our downvotes as “we don’t like your views”—but “hey, that could have been kinder/more rational/more to the point—why don’t you think about it”
If you respond in a more considered, more rational way (not your views, but your tone), then you will likely see an improvement in your karma.
I’m going to have to disagree here, that’s much more helpful to a person than wordless shunning. Like, regardless of how unhelpful it can be, it is a factor of infinity more helpful and more humane than just downvoting. As Eliezer puts it, apathy is sometimes worse than hate. At least someone who hates you cares enough to do something.
I actually think the setup we’ve got here where you hemorrhage karma every time you engage a downvoted thread is a really obscenely terrible choice for a community of analyticals. A norm of rejecting arguments without feeling any need to explain yourself is much worse for us than a relatively weak time-sync(next to the average mobile game, comment trolls are nothing). In the least, the threshold (-5 karma) is too low.
I agree that actual words explaining why you gave a downvote is far more beneficial than simple silent shunning. I strongly endorse giving useful feedback whenever you downvote on a post here.
However I disagree that the usual kind of youtube-comment vitirol is useful data. Profanity-filled ad-hominem does not give you useful information to update upon. I’d rather five silent downvotes from a community whose opinions I trust than five unhelpful youtube comments. YMMV
Why?
If you look at my profile you’d notice I have enough karma to look like a bible salesman. It seems like for whatever reason my comments are not appreciated if not depreciated. The annoying thing is that I’m repeatedly judged (downvoted) but am not given any explanation. Whatever’s supposedly wrong with my comments isn’t even being explained and it keeps happening enopugh for me to realize I’m not getting anything positive from commenting.
Skimming your comment history it seems like the majority of your downvotes comes from expressing views inconsistent with the progressivist narrative on gender. LW now is overloaded with that.
My impression is that the problem isn’t disagreement with, or disapproval of, his views so much as it’s a feeling that (1) some topics he wants to talk about (his success or lack of it with women) don’t really belong here and (2) the manner in which he talks about them is inappropriate. A few examples:
(This was in a comment that’s currently at +1-3; there were other not-terribly-impressive things in it, but my guess is that the quoted sentence is what got the downvotes.) So: gratuitous rudeness about poly people (of whom there are a fair number here), expressed in needlessly coarse terms. It doesn’t seem terribly surprising that it got some downvotes. Nothing to do with the progressivist narrative on gender here.
(This was in a comment that’s at +1-4.) Dumping his own personal frustrations into a discussion about something else. Unnecessary fucking. Again, no progressive narrative required.
Actually, the most-downvoted comments I saw in my quick trawl through UH’s history had nothing to do with gender. For instance: on +1-6 there was a reply to RichardKennaway’s observation that LW has advice on how to start liking things but nothing on how to stop liking things, which I frankly found almost incomprehensible; on +0-4, a complaint about LW having karma-based limits on what you can do; a couple of heavily downvoted comments in a thread that is about gender, but where the downvotes are clearly for UH being pointlessly and contentlessly rude to other people.
My overall impression is that UH’s comments are usually poorly written, frequently dismissive to others without cause, often more concerned with his own personal life than is appropriate in context, sometimes downright incomprehensible, and with a surfeit of “fucking”s that frequently makes him sound like an overwrought teenager. (Sorry, UH, but that’s how it is.) His attitude to women probably doesn’t help (seriously, did you see what he wrote to Alicorn?) but I’d be surprised if even the most generous intepretation of “views inconsistent with the progressivist narrative on gender” had those views accounting for more than 5% of his downvotes.
[EDITED to fix a minor grammatical screwup.]
My views are simply what I judge to be the best way to solve a problem in the most efficient manner that generates the most results.
If people disagree with them, that’s fine; but they ought to try and prove me incorrect instead of just giving me a minus one.
Gender is no different and people ought to try and solve problems instead of typical minding or whatever other nonsense they spew rather than solve the fucking problem at hand.
it’s up to you to find the truth, not up to other people to pound it into your head for you.
Your views aren’t really what’s at issue here, but how you are saying what you are saying. A number of times you have resorted to pure ad hominem (and sometimes it’s downright rude). I know you must understand that this is going to be frowned upon on a site like this.
gjm has given a very excellent description of the kinds of things that have been downvoted and why that is likely. It’s well worth a read… it will help you on other sites than this one. From my experience,, LW is a very forgiving group compared to others—where here you get a gentle nudge through a downvote—others will simply spew vitriol your way. I think you shouldn’t interpret our downvotes as “we don’t like your views”—but “hey, that could have been kinder/more rational/more to the point—why don’t you think about it”
If you respond in a more considered, more rational way (not your views, but your tone), then you will likely see an improvement in your karma.
I’m going to have to disagree here, that’s much more helpful to a person than wordless shunning. Like, regardless of how unhelpful it can be, it is a factor of infinity more helpful and more humane than just downvoting. As Eliezer puts it, apathy is sometimes worse than hate. At least someone who hates you cares enough to do something.
I actually think the setup we’ve got here where you hemorrhage karma every time you engage a downvoted thread is a really obscenely terrible choice for a community of analyticals. A norm of rejecting arguments without feeling any need to explain yourself is much worse for us than a relatively weak time-sync(next to the average mobile game, comment trolls are nothing). In the least, the threshold (-5 karma) is too low.
I agree that actual words explaining why you gave a downvote is far more beneficial than simple silent shunning. I strongly endorse giving useful feedback whenever you downvote on a post here.
However I disagree that the usual kind of youtube-comment vitirol is useful data. Profanity-filled ad-hominem does not give you useful information to update upon. I’d rather five silent downvotes from a community whose opinions I trust than five unhelpful youtube comments. YMMV