It is not “fine to get into arguments”. The FAQ definitely lays out goals of having interactions here be civil and collaborative.
Unfortunately, becoming less wrong (reaching the truth) benefits hugely from not getting into arguments.
If you tell a human being (even a rationalist) something true, with good evidence or arguments, but you do it in an aggressive or otherwise irritating way, they may very well become less likely to believe that true thing, because they associate it with you and want to fight both you and the idea.
This is true of you and other rationalists as well as everyone else.
This is not to argue that the bans might not be overdoing it; it’s trying to do what Habryka doesn’t have time to do: explain to you why you’re getting downvoted even when you’re making sense.
It’s “fine” in the sense that reddit works fine, downvoted arguments just reduces visibility. Users aren’t punished for occasional mass downvoted comments, they are auto hidden. Moderation is bright line and transparent.
So I was simply trying to understand the why. Why be vague on the reason, why not reference the infringing material, why make up new rules and apply retroactively over a year!, what are the benefits, what is the problem being solved or prevented. If you think an argument is bad, ok, how did you know this?
Are you actually getting the smartest content like you intend or a bunch of users with complex theories that sound smart but very likely are subtly but catastrophically wrong. See Titotals posts where he finds examples of this.
I don’t think this is a new insight though I thought of it. The reason physics can “support” complex equations as theories is because the data quality for physics is high : reproducible experiments, many sig figures, the complexity is the simplest found so far.
Something like economics, only the simplest theories probably have any genuine validity. Due to low data quality, inferring past simple ideas like supply and demand or marginal decisions probably heads quickly into “most likely wrong” territory.
This is the problem with AI predictions or any other future predictions. When your data is from the future your quality is very poor, like uncontrolled economics experiments. What you can model is limited or what model can be justified is limited.
It’s ironic that your response doesn’t address my comment. That was one of the stated reasons for your limit. This also addresses why Habryka thought explaining it to you further didn’t seem likely to help.
How to best moderate a website such as LW is a deep and difficult question. If you have better ideas, that might be useful. Just do more, better is not a useful suggestion.
It is not “fine to get into arguments”. The FAQ definitely lays out goals of having interactions here be civil and collaborative.
Unfortunately, becoming less wrong (reaching the truth) benefits hugely from not getting into arguments.
If you tell a human being (even a rationalist) something true, with good evidence or arguments, but you do it in an aggressive or otherwise irritating way, they may very well become less likely to believe that true thing, because they associate it with you and want to fight both you and the idea.
This is true of you and other rationalists as well as everyone else.
This is not to argue that the bans might not be overdoing it; it’s trying to do what Habryka doesn’t have time to do: explain to you why you’re getting downvoted even when you’re making sense.
It’s “fine” in the sense that reddit works fine, downvoted arguments just reduces visibility. Users aren’t punished for occasional mass downvoted comments, they are auto hidden. Moderation is bright line and transparent.
So I was simply trying to understand the why. Why be vague on the reason, why not reference the infringing material, why make up new rules and apply retroactively over a year!, what are the benefits, what is the problem being solved or prevented. If you think an argument is bad, ok, how did you know this?
Are you actually getting the smartest content like you intend or a bunch of users with complex theories that sound smart but very likely are subtly but catastrophically wrong. See Titotals posts where he finds examples of this.
I don’t think this is a new insight though I thought of it. The reason physics can “support” complex equations as theories is because the data quality for physics is high : reproducible experiments, many sig figures, the complexity is the simplest found so far.
Something like economics, only the simplest theories probably have any genuine validity. Due to low data quality, inferring past simple ideas like supply and demand or marginal decisions probably heads quickly into “most likely wrong” territory.
This is the problem with AI predictions or any other future predictions. When your data is from the future your quality is very poor, like uncontrolled economics experiments. What you can model is limited or what model can be justified is limited.
The simple explanation is all you can justify.
It’s ironic that your response doesn’t address my comment. That was one of the stated reasons for your limit. This also addresses why Habryka thought explaining it to you further didn’t seem likely to help.
How to best moderate a website such as LW is a deep and difficult question. If you have better ideas, that might be useful. Just do more, better is not a useful suggestion.