I don’t know if this is worth the cost of implementing, but I absolutely like the idea. In particular, in the hypothetical world where this was in place, if one had e.g. two karma to spend per post (upvote strength of two) they could at most upvote or downvote two particular paragraphs, such that they’d left the same “weight” of opinion, but in a more detailed way.
Oliver, Ben and I were actually talking about this a few days ago. (I actually ran into the “man I really wish I could upvote this paragraph and downvote this other paragraph a week ago)
A few thoughts came up (epistemic status: current thoughts, nothing clearcut)
a) it might incentivize certain writing styles. Exact details depend on the execution, but regardless you’re fiddling with Goodheart’s Demon. It could have weirder consequences than you intend. And this might subtly make people with different writing styles (in particular ones with more meandering styles rather than clearly bulleted points) feel like the site didn’t want them to write the way they felt most comfortable, which leads to them writing less.
b) you might be able to get most of the same value by implementing claims as an object type. i.e. let people write their article without worry about how pieces of it will get upvoted/downvoted, but afterwards you have the option of adding a summary of explicit claims, which get listed as short bullet points and potentially top-level-comments to respond to. Those claims can be either upvoted/downvoted, or potentially (see Robby Bensinger comment somewhere on this page), get a “probability this is correct” a la Arbital.
The Claim Thing is also fiddling with incentives that might have unintended consequences, but seemed like it might be pointing in a direction that was a) easier to implement, and b) if done well could have other valuable downstream effects, c) you probably don’t want to implement both because they are occupying similar niches, and each feature adds to the cognitive load of the site.
I don’t know if this is worth the cost of implementing, but I absolutely like the idea. In particular, in the hypothetical world where this was in place, if one had e.g. two karma to spend per post (upvote strength of two) they could at most upvote or downvote two particular paragraphs, such that they’d left the same “weight” of opinion, but in a more detailed way.
Oliver, Ben and I were actually talking about this a few days ago. (I actually ran into the “man I really wish I could upvote this paragraph and downvote this other paragraph a week ago)
A few thoughts came up (epistemic status: current thoughts, nothing clearcut)
a) it might incentivize certain writing styles. Exact details depend on the execution, but regardless you’re fiddling with Goodheart’s Demon. It could have weirder consequences than you intend. And this might subtly make people with different writing styles (in particular ones with more meandering styles rather than clearly bulleted points) feel like the site didn’t want them to write the way they felt most comfortable, which leads to them writing less.
b) you might be able to get most of the same value by implementing claims as an object type. i.e. let people write their article without worry about how pieces of it will get upvoted/downvoted, but afterwards you have the option of adding a summary of explicit claims, which get listed as short bullet points and potentially top-level-comments to respond to. Those claims can be either upvoted/downvoted, or potentially (see Robby Bensinger comment somewhere on this page), get a “probability this is correct” a la Arbital.
The Claim Thing is also fiddling with incentives that might have unintended consequences, but seemed like it might be pointing in a direction that was a) easier to implement, and b) if done well could have other valuable downstream effects, c) you probably don’t want to implement both because they are occupying similar niches, and each feature adds to the cognitive load of the site.