My hypothesis: you’re a poor judge of whether people are reading an exchange. (where would you get that data?)
So how does your hypothesis explain that these hypothetical other readers consistently read one statement and disagree with it, and then read another statement disagreeing with the first statement, and disagree with that also?
My hypothesis: you’re a poor judge of the quality of your comments and posts.
My hypothesis: You didn’t bother checking any data before your knee-jerk response, even though it was a button-click away. Honestly, did you?
If I were merely a poor judge, my sample size is large enough that the correlation would most likely be low or random, not strongly negative.
But instead of a hypothesis, let’s give you some objective data. Would you agree that
higher-quality posts should generate more discussion?
Here are posts I have made, followed by their voted score, followed by
the number of comments.
Media bias, 30, 43 - Mechanics without wrenches, 23, 71 -
A note on hypotheticals, 18, 17 -
Tell it to someone who doesn’t care, 15, 34
The Machine Learning Personality Test, 15, 27
Aumann voting; or, How to vote when you’re ignorant, 10, 31
On dollars, utility, and crack cocaine, 8, 97
Exterminating life is rational, 7, 216
Marketing rationalism, 7, 54
Extreme updating: The devil is in the missing details, 6, 16
Would you agree that higher-quality posts should generate more discussion?
No. A good troll can get far more comments than almost any high-quality non-troll post. And you also cannot ignore the difficulty of the post, or how much knowledge it presupposes (and thus how small its potential audience is), or whether the post is on a topic that everybody is an expert in (e.g., politics, male-female relations, religion).
I for one comment far more on Phil’s posts when I think they’re completely misguided than I do otherwise. Not sure what that says about me, but if others did likewise, we would predict precisely the relationship Phil is observing.
So how does your hypothesis explain that these hypothetical other readers consistently read one statement and disagree with it, and then read another statement disagreeing with the first statement, and disagree with that also?
You’re assuming that these hypothetical other readers downvote for disagreement. It’s completely possible to read an internet argument and think the entire thing is just stupid/poor quality/not worth wasting time on.
Here are posts I have made, followed by their voted score, followed by the number of comments.
Is your assumption that quality of post is proportional to the amount of discussion under it? (Edit: I see that indeed it is.) That seems like a huge assumption, especially since many long exchanges spin off from nitpicks and tangents. Also, the post of yours that generated the most comments was also really long, and even then a fair chunk of the replies were the descendants of my gendered language nudge.
Exactly. I’d guess (based on the stated justifications for voting that have been uttered in many LW threads) that most people don’t vote based on disagreement but on what they want to see more of and what they want to see less of.
My hypothesis: you’re a poor judge of whether people are reading an exchange. (where would you get that data?)
My hypothesis: you’re a poor judge of the quality of your comments and posts.
So how does your hypothesis explain that these hypothetical other readers consistently read one statement and disagree with it, and then read another statement disagreeing with the first statement, and disagree with that also?
My hypothesis: You didn’t bother checking any data before your knee-jerk response, even though it was a button-click away. Honestly, did you?
If I were merely a poor judge, my sample size is large enough that the correlation would most likely be low or random, not strongly negative.
But instead of a hypothesis, let’s give you some objective data. Would you agree that higher-quality posts should generate more discussion?
Here are posts I have made, followed by their voted score, followed by the number of comments.
Media bias, 30, 43 - Mechanics without wrenches, 23, 71 - A note on hypotheticals, 18, 17 - Tell it to someone who doesn’t care, 15, 34
The Machine Learning Personality Test, 15, 27
Aumann voting; or, How to vote when you’re ignorant, 10, 31
On dollars, utility, and crack cocaine, 8, 97
Exterminating life is rational, 7, 216
Marketing rationalism, 7, 54
Extreme updating: The devil is in the missing details, 6, 16
Calibration fail, 5, 36.
Chomsky on reason and science, 5, 6
Is masochism necessary?, 4, 123
You can’t believe in Bayes, 1, 53
Average utilitarianism must be correct?, 1, 111
Rationalists lose when others choose, 0, 52
Homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, 0, 77
Correlation coefficient = -.23
Linear regression slope = −1.4
No. A good troll can get far more comments than almost any high-quality non-troll post. And you also cannot ignore the difficulty of the post, or how much knowledge it presupposes (and thus how small its potential audience is), or whether the post is on a topic that everybody is an expert in (e.g., politics, male-female relations, religion).
I for one comment far more on Phil’s posts when I think they’re completely misguided than I do otherwise. Not sure what that says about me, but if others did likewise, we would predict precisely the relationship Phil is observing.
You’re assuming that these hypothetical other readers downvote for disagreement. It’s completely possible to read an internet argument and think the entire thing is just stupid/poor quality/not worth wasting time on.
Is your assumption that quality of post is proportional to the amount of discussion under it? (Edit: I see that indeed it is.) That seems like a huge assumption, especially since many long exchanges spin off from nitpicks and tangents. Also, the post of yours that generated the most comments was also really long, and even then a fair chunk of the replies were the descendants of my gendered language nudge.
Exactly. I’d guess (based on the stated justifications for voting that have been uttered in many LW threads) that most people don’t vote based on disagreement but on what they want to see more of and what they want to see less of.