Yeah, good point about control through a third party/vs. the author themselves.
Tangentially related: My intuition is that there’s a spectrum between categorization & censorship (burying comments, hiding very downvoted threads (i.e. making people click extra to see them) – just some trivial inconveniences). The great firewall of china is not difficult to circumvent, but >90% of people can’t be bothered to set up a VPN.
I really like this paragraph of yours:
About the quality/truth aspect I agree but any system currently used is not reflecting that. If somebody makes a post it is rated for quality/truth by other people. But nobody rates their rating. People can just vote down or up without it reflecting the truth or quality. I can downvote your comment even if it is true because I do not like you.
I wonder what would happen if sites allowed higher-order voting (voting about votes themselves). Or does voting itself already solve the necessary problems?
As for checking truth/relevance, I’m a big fan of Metaculus. Sure, it has an up/downvote functionality for comments/questions, but there’s still an inbuilt mechanism for deciding who was right with their predictions in the end (and if you are prescient, people will respect you more).
I disagree with you on “good” content, though. On the very basic level, there’s stuff I like (and would like to like, and so on), and stuff I don’t like (or whose disliking I’d endorse, and so on). I realize other people are similar to that, and will respect their recommendations (e.g. LessWrong upvotes). This “liking” already includes stuff from different viewpoints – anarchist and communization writings, social choice theory and deleuze etc.
And while I don’t know how you organise your social interactions, I (mostly subconsciously) perform a lot of social filtering for people who say interesting and smart things, and probably also for people who agree with me in their basic outlook on life. Not completely, of course, but I’d be surprised if not everyone did this.
I disagree with you on “good” content, though. On the very basic level, there’s stuff I like (and would like to like, and so on), and stuff I don’t like (or whose disliking I’d endorse, and so on). I realize other people are similar to that, and will respect their recommendations (e.g. LessWrong upvotes). This “liking” already includes stuff from different viewpoints – anarchist and communization writings, social choice theory and deleuze etc.
I see the reason but current voting systems will censor content that you do not like which is harmful to have objective discussions.
And while I don’t know how you organise your social interactions, I (mostly subconsciously) perform a lot of social filtering for people who say interesting and smart things, and probably also for people who agree with me in their basic outlook on life. Not completely, of course, but I’d be surprised if not everyone did this.
this is not censorship. I can say that I prefer a mix of both. I find it interesting to see the difference in a community looking at their most liked content and the least liked or ignored content. I’m aware of how the system works so I purposely try to avoid the rating. There are very few people who do so though.
On another note, we should also be really aware of forums and social media with voting systems. They reinforce bubbles and echo chambers. People have delved into Social Media being Skinner Boxes for humans. We are trained to act in a way that is most suitable for the algorithm which gives us the most upvotes and thus gratification.
Yeah, good point about control through a third party/vs. the author themselves.
Tangentially related: My intuition is that there’s a spectrum between categorization & censorship (burying comments, hiding very downvoted threads (i.e. making people click extra to see them) – just some trivial inconveniences). The great firewall of china is not difficult to circumvent, but >90% of people can’t be bothered to set up a VPN.
I really like this paragraph of yours:
I wonder what would happen if sites allowed higher-order voting (voting about votes themselves). Or does voting itself already solve the necessary problems?
As for checking truth/relevance, I’m a big fan of Metaculus. Sure, it has an up/downvote functionality for comments/questions, but there’s still an inbuilt mechanism for deciding who was right with their predictions in the end (and if you are prescient, people will respect you more).
I disagree with you on “good” content, though. On the very basic level, there’s stuff I like (and would like to like, and so on), and stuff I don’t like (or whose disliking I’d endorse, and so on). I realize other people are similar to that, and will respect their recommendations (e.g. LessWrong upvotes). This “liking” already includes stuff from different viewpoints – anarchist and communization writings, social choice theory and deleuze etc.
And while I don’t know how you organise your social interactions, I (mostly subconsciously) perform a lot of social filtering for people who say interesting and smart things, and probably also for people who agree with me in their basic outlook on life. Not completely, of course, but I’d be surprised if not everyone did this.
I see the reason but current voting systems will censor content that you do not like which is harmful to have objective discussions.
this is not censorship.
I can say that I prefer a mix of both. I find it interesting to see the difference in a community looking at their most liked content and the least liked or ignored content. I’m aware of how the system works so I purposely try to avoid the rating. There are very few people who do so though.
On another note, we should also be really aware of forums and social media with voting systems. They reinforce bubbles and echo chambers. People have delved into Social Media being Skinner Boxes for humans. We are trained to act in a way that is most suitable for the algorithm which gives us the most upvotes and thus gratification.
You’re right, my example is not censorship.