calcsam has 20 karma that is not accounted for by any of his posts or comments. This means that he created an account, gathered twenty karma from comments, then deleted those comments. This probably means that he wanted to have a clean account with the ability to post ready, probably before he knew what he was going to do with it. (I keep a 20-karma, empty-history account in reserve myself. It’s an obviously useful thing to have, when you think about it.)
(EDIT: Wait, no he doesn’t. I was looking at the sidebar to count upvotes, but that has a bit of delay between updates that the karma bubble doesn’t.)
Delusions that are truly widely held and not merely believed to be widely held are far too dangerous to attack. There are sociopolitical Eldritch Abominations that it would serve LW well to stay well clear of and perhaps even pretend they don’t exist for the time being.
The next time you feel that way, make yourself another identity, and use it to say the things you wouldn’t otherwise. It really is quite liberating. It’s very rare for a delusion to really be too strong to attack, especially here; it is only that you fear backlash.
20 karma so you can post. Empty history so you can keep it in long-term storage without risking losing karma, so that if you need to post on short notice, you don’t have to wait for something else to be upvoted. Fresh account in case anonymity is required.
That sounds laborious enough to set up that I don’t think I’d consider it a serious vulnerability, but I’m having a lot of trouble coming up with a scenario where it’d be worth the trouble. There are situations where I might benignly want to write an anonymous top-level post, but relatively few that absolutely have to be outside the discussion section, and essentially none that also have to be done on zero notice.
At least aside from perpetrating some kind of drama, and I hardly need to emphasize why that’s a bad idea.
It’s not about being able to post anonymously on zero notice, but about removing the temptation to skip making an anonymous account in borderline cases by converting it to a sunk cost.
The discussion section does change the calculation somewhat, but getting 20 karma on a clean account is not much more effort than getting 2 karma. (Someone explained the strategy elsewhere on this thread.)
This all grew out of a couple extended discussions I had with Eliezer, Will and Divia.
Sam Bhagwat to Eliezer, William, Divia
Eliezer, Will, Divia,
I wrote a couple of posts based on our discussions. I tried to post them; however, I lack 20 karma points. Do any of you have the power to just magically give me those points? If not, I quickly posted seven relatively banal comments. If you all upvote all of them, that will give me 21 karma.
That sounds plausible in general, but I just loaded calcsam’s profile in a different tab, and it’s showing that he has 160 total karma, 7 upvotes/70 karma from one top post, and 9 upvotes/90 karma from the other top post, and a handful of comments with zero karma. I don’t see where you’re getting the extra 20 points from.
Huh—I reloaded, and now it matches up. I was looking at the post scores on the sidebar (it was showing the post scores blanked out on the user page, which it does for posts that are too new), and the sidebar has a bit of delay between updates that could easily explain it. On the other hand, that leaves the original question unexplained. Hmm.
This seems strange behaviour for a new user, and I can find no evidence that the calcsam account belongs to someone with another account (and I’ve looked so this is evidence of absence). It seems more likely that an Editor gave him some karma.
Only to the extent that you’d expect to find a connection if you looked, and I expect connections between accounts can be hidden pretty reliably to withstand a causal examination if that’s seen as a goal. So very weak evidence (however the coin actually happens to land).
The first explanation I posited, before the karma for his most recent post became visible, seems to be incorrect, but I don’t think calcsam is a new user.
calcsam has 20 karma that is not accounted for by any of his posts or comments. This means that he created an account, gathered twenty karma from comments, then deleted those comments. This probably means that he wanted to have a clean account with the ability to post ready, probably before he knew what he was going to do with it. (I keep a 20-karma, empty-history account in reserve myself. It’s an obviously useful thing to have, when you think about it.)
(EDIT: Wait, no he doesn’t. I was looking at the sidebar to count upvotes, but that has a bit of delay between updates that the karma bubble doesn’t.)
Bloody munchkins!
Help me out… why?
To quote Quirinus Quirrell
20 karma so you can post. Empty history so you can keep it in long-term storage without risking losing karma, so that if you need to post on short notice, you don’t have to wait for something else to be upvoted. Fresh account in case anonymity is required.
That sounds laborious enough to set up that I don’t think I’d consider it a serious vulnerability, but I’m having a lot of trouble coming up with a scenario where it’d be worth the trouble. There are situations where I might benignly want to write an anonymous top-level post, but relatively few that absolutely have to be outside the discussion section, and essentially none that also have to be done on zero notice.
At least aside from perpetrating some kind of drama, and I hardly need to emphasize why that’s a bad idea.
It’s not about being able to post anonymously on zero notice, but about removing the temptation to skip making an anonymous account in borderline cases by converting it to a sunk cost.
The discussion section does change the calculation somewhat, but getting 20 karma on a clean account is not much more effort than getting 2 karma. (Someone explained the strategy elsewhere on this thread.)
That sounds genius, and simple. Do you have some more examples where this way of preemptive barrier removal proved useful?
Eliezer gave me Karma.
This all grew out of a couple extended discussions I had with Eliezer, Will and Divia.
Sam Bhagwat to Eliezer, William, Divia
Eliezer, Will, Divia,
I wrote a couple of posts based on our discussions. I tried to post them; however, I lack 20 karma points. Do any of you have the power to just magically give me those points? If not, I quickly posted seven relatively banal comments. If you all upvote all of them, that will give me 21 karma.
http://lesswrong.com/user/calcsam/
Thanks, Sam
Eliezer Yudkowsky to William, me, Divia
Actually, I just upvoted the two posts, since I can see the drafts. 10 points each = problem solved, I hope.
Confirmed true.
That sounds plausible in general, but I just loaded calcsam’s profile in a different tab, and it’s showing that he has 160 total karma, 7 upvotes/70 karma from one top post, and 9 upvotes/90 karma from the other top post, and a handful of comments with zero karma. I don’t see where you’re getting the extra 20 points from.
Huh—I reloaded, and now it matches up. I was looking at the post scores on the sidebar (it was showing the post scores blanked out on the user page, which it does for posts that are too new), and the sidebar has a bit of delay between updates that could easily explain it. On the other hand, that leaves the original question unexplained. Hmm.
This seems strange behaviour for a new user, and I can find no evidence that the calcsam account belongs to someone with another account (and I’ve looked so this is evidence of absence). It seems more likely that an Editor gave him some karma.
Only to the extent that you’d expect to find a connection if you looked, and I expect connections between accounts can be hidden pretty reliably to withstand a causal examination if that’s seen as a goal. So very weak evidence (however the coin actually happens to land).
The first explanation I posited, before the karma for his most recent post became visible, seems to be incorrect, but I don’t think calcsam is a new user.
Correct.