I find poker to be a fantastic teaching tool. You make the best decisions and then are confronted with results that vary wildly in the short-term. Over time though, the correct decisions and behavior pay off. This is a perfect model (in a simplified form) for how things like patience and morality function in the real world. They don’t guarantee immediate payoffs and short-term success, they work most often and most reliably over long time frames.
EGarrett
Karma: 268
To Viliam,
Trolling/flaming/spamming report buttons are clearly labeled for their purpose. The downvote button isn’t.
To Nornagest,
Here’s the big difference: On Facebook, you can’t stop OTHER people from seeing what the person has to say, no matter how much you scream at them. With the system here, you can. Their posts will be hidden and they can even lose their posting privileges when they are downvoted. And when I say that’s a big difference, I mean that’s a BIG difference. Again, think of the religious forum. This same karma system would allow them to literally stop you from speaking to or influencing people who are on the fence or more open to rationality, instead of just posting replies that highlight their own immaturity or irrationality. I think the issue here is clear.
Secondly, when you refer to (I presume) LessWrong as “an ideologically-mixed environment that values things other than conformity,” you’re assuming that everyone here views it that way. If everyone saw the downvote button in the same idealized form, we wouldn’t have a problem. The issue is that the downvote button does not have such a clear and apparent definition, and there doesn’t appear to be any actual enforced policy by the LessWrong admins to stop people from using the downvote button to simply express disagreement.
You probably have more experience than I do with how people as a whole do the voting. I’m just concerned with potential problems.
I think you’re definitely right that we need to be able to control people who stop the site from being an honest exchange of ideas or good-faith discussion. It might be better to have a button to report trolling, flaming or spamming, but not an all-purpose downvote that might be used for other reasons.
The example I think about is a Religious Forum. If they had a “downvoting” feature that was implemented in the same way that the Less Wrong feature is...anyone showing up who asks too many skeptical questions could just be downvoted out of existence without anyone answering their arguments.
Perhaps this demonstrates how it could be an Anti-Rational tool or encourage groupthink...which I think is dangerous.
Well I’m sure each person downvotes for their own reasons, but I have noticed several people who, when they are disagreeing with someone, tend to have a consistent series of “-1” votes showing up on the posts of the person with whom they’re disagreeing.
If they are doing what it seems, I would say this is an example of the problem. Downvoting also allows people to express disagreement without having to give reasons or even pay much attention to what’s said. I think this also goes against the purpose of the site.
I’ve commented also that the karma system, as it is currently, causes less participation on the site. Just to save time I’ll paste it here.
“The fundamental flaw that I see with LessWrong’s main site is that its karma/moderating system has the effect of silencing and banning people for being disagreed with or misunderstood. This is a major problem. You cannot mix “I don’t agree with you” or “I don’t understand you” with “you will be punished and silenced.”
People who spam, flame, or otherwise destroy conversation are the ones who need to be silenced, ignored or banned, and a lot of sites like Facebook have separate buttons to perform exactly that function. People in the other category, who are misunderstood or disagreed with, but who discuss constructively and rationally, are the ones who MOST need to be able to speak. I think the punishment and silencing, and the threat of it, contributes largely to any lack of new posters or threads that you might see. I know I personally refrain from posting theories or models I have that are counter-intuitive and would actually start good discussions specifically for this reason...and I put them on the LessWrong Facebook page or bring them up at Meetups instead, where I’ve had some great conversations and made some good friends because of it.”
I think once I organize my thoughts on some of the topics enough, I will give it a go with a post or two.
The fundamental flaw that I see with LessWrong’s main site is that its karma/moderating system has the effect of silencing and banning people for being disagreed with or misunderstood. This is a major problem. You cannot mix “I don’t agree with you” or “I don’t understand you” with “you will be punished and silenced.”
People who spam, flame, or otherwise destroy conversation are the ones who need to be silenced, ignored or banned, and a lot of sites like Facebook have separate buttons to perform exactly that function. People in the other category, who are misunderstood or disagreed with, but who discuss constructively and rationally, are the ones who MOST need to be able to speak. I think the punishment and silencing, and the threat of it, contributes largely to any lack of new posters or threads that you might see. I know I personally refrain from posting theories or models I have that are counter-intuitive and would actually start good discussions specifically for this reason...and I put them on the LessWrong Facebook page or bring them up at Meetups instead, where I’ve had some great conversations and made some good friends because of it.
“My ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book.”
-Nietszche
Oh, I haven’t posted anything on it yet, but I was researching it in order to work on my own narration. The channel is at youtube.com/StoryBrain and is devoted largely to books and movies and my own theories I developed working as a Story Analyst, sort-of like Freakonomics for Entertainment. If you like the videos, subscribe, I have tons of stuff planned. :)
I did a lot of research into this for my youtube channel, and I also watched some of the Olivia Fox stuff, I think there are a few things that matter and aren’t covered in the general theory, like being unrehearsed. I assumed this was covered under “presence,” but the way it’s described, it sounds like it’s the same category as “warmth.”
The main thing I noticed that makes a lot of intelligent people uncharismatic is that their speech doesn’t match their train of thought. Possibly because they are thinking about too many things at once. I do this a lot when I’m not paying attention, and it makes you speak too quickly, not enunciate, and often mumble or have an unnatural tone to your voice. When you can stick to one train of thought and slow your words down until they match the speed of that one train of thought, you’ll find that you naturally pick up the inflection, clear pronunciation, and changes in tone and rhythm that communicate your meaning more clearly and make you sound far more confident and engaging.
It’s much easier to demonstrate this speaking out loud instead of in-text, but that would be something great to focus on at the meet-up.
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” -George Bernard Shaw
I recently finished the second video for StoryBrain, which is my youtube channel and Twitter account dedicated to sharing the various theories and discoveries I made about books and movies in the course of working for years as a story analyst.
It’s basically dedicated to all of the most interesting, useful, uncommon and counter-intuitive things I have, using evolutionary psychology, equations that model human reactions, and examples from just about everywhere in pop culture past and present. So in a lot of ways it’s like Freakonomics for books and movies. Or anything else with a storyline.
I’m pretty excited about it and have taken a lot of time putting together a good look and format for the channel, and my editing and voice-work are pretty good so far (I’ve done work as a radio reporter). And the sheer amount of material I have and things I can cover is pretty staggering. Everything I’ve discovered I question and test intensely with every example I can think of, and so far I’ve got quite a few things that I think answer centuries old questions about the topics and really, honestly, can transform the way we think and talk about movies.
I’ve brought a few ideas up at professional writing forums and at the last MeetUp I attended, and just the fundamental stuff generated a 40+ reply thread on a very small site and had us talking for 30 minutes plus at the MeetUp (some of it is pretty counter-intuitive and I guess strange-looking at first). I was also considering writing a sequence on storytelling for here, but I’m not familiar enough with the site’s dynamics and standards to make that venture yet. Anyway, as asked, I’ve put up two videos so far on lighter topics and will transition into my introductory videos talking about myself and the abnormal circumstances that led me into studying this in the first place, pretty soon.
Unless OKCupid is hiring the government or people with guns to threaten other websites out of existence, there won’t be a drift towards a monopoly.
A monopoly isn’t created by one company getting the overwhelming majority of customers. A monopoly is only created when competitors cannot enter the market. It’s a subtle distinction but it’s very important, because what’s implied is that the company with the monopoly can jack up their prices and abuse customers. They can’t do this without feeding a garden of small competitors that can and will outgrow them (see Myspace, America Online, etc), unless those competitors are disallowed from ever existing.
You can keep downvoting this, but it’s a very important concept in economics and it will still be true.
Hi Eugine,
I don’t mean to be nitpicking, but a monopoly is a very specific thing. It’s quite different than it just being inconvenient to switch to a competitor. In very many cases in normal market competition, it’s inconvenient to switch to competitors (buying a new car or house, changing your insurance, and so on), but that doesn’t effect the quality of the product. Similarly, for a monopoly to effect the quality of OKCupid’s service, it would have to be a very specific situation, and different than what currently exists, which seems to be quite normal market functioning.
How can there be a monopoly if people can use more than one dating site?
Unless OkCupid bans you from putting your profile up on other sites, you can just as easily put a profile on another site with less people, if the site seems promising.
How do you know when you’ve had a good idea?
I’ve found this to actually be difficult to figure out. Sometimes you can google up what you thought. Sometimes checking to see where the idea has been previously stated requires going through papers that may be very very long, or hidden by pay-walls or other barriers on scientific journal sites.
Sometimes it’s very hard to google things up. To me, I suppose the standard for “that’s a good idea,” is if it more clearly explains something I previously observed, or makes it easier or faster for me to do something. But I have no idea whether or not that means it will be interesting for other people.
How do you like to check your ideas?
I noticed recently that one of the mental processes that gets in the way of my proper thinking is an urge to instantly answer a question then spend the rest of my time trying to justify that knee-jerk answer.
For example, I saw a post recently asking whether chess or poker was more popular worldwide. For some reason I wanted to say “obviously x is more popular,” but I realized that I don’t actually know. And if I avoid that urge to answer the question instantly, it’s much easier for me to keep my ego out of issues and to investigate things properly...including making it easier for me recognize things that I don’t know and acknowledge that I don’t know them.
Is there a formal name for this type of bias or behavior pattern? It would let me search up some Sequence posts or articles to read.
Hi,
You definitely can tell factual things to children (or people in general) in order to teach them about the world. But, you can also tell them factual things in order to let them hear something interesting or stimulating while they’re bored.
Sort-of like how someone might tell you how their car broke down when they come in late to work. And if you go to a comedy club later, he might tell you about the same thing, but for a different reason: Because it’s funny.
So when I bring up the sun-moon example at a campfire, I intend to mean it as being something that will draw the kid’s interest (basically an emotional effect), and yeah, I imagine it as being told in a way where it is more like narration and describes thing in a more dramatic way. But since it’s intended to create an emotional effect, and the factual nature of it is really much less important, I say that’s a story, since the emotion effect is what I’ve found the core purpose of storytelling to be.
Hopefully I put that clearly.
I have a folder with various document files on my various theories and work. I used to go with the earliest ideas at the top and then work downward. Now I’ve reversed that and have the newest ideas at the top, so I start out looking at the latest things. I bold the main concept that made me want to write that thing down, so I can skim the file easily, and then under that use hyphens with each thought or longer statement relating to it. So a typical entry looks something like this. (for some reason I can’t do hard returns so...it actually wouldn’t look like this at all.)
Ted Williams called his book “The Science of Hitting.” -This type of phrase might be good if we want to collect this as a book. -We can go to wikipedia later and see how the book was received.
If I have a breakthrough, I put it in red, and if I quote something or have something interesting, it’s in italics.