Karma Changes

That is hilarious! And so pertinent.

For us non manga/anime geeks, could you provide some context please.

edit: Found this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=over+9000

edit2: I originally linked to encyclopediadramatica.com, but changed the link to Urban Dictionary because someone mentioned that the ads contained pornography (I had not noticed that).

I occasionally post despite fears of disapproval, but then immediately after posting my anxiety levels will become so uncomfortably high I delete the comment. Perhaps some people have noticed me doing this, but if they knew how anxious I felt I believe they would understand. It's kind of neurotic...

I also have some social anxiety as well. A usual amount, I think. And then I tell myself that posting on Less Wrong (which is not the 'real world') would be good desensitizing training. I think it has helped some, but occasionally it has the opposite effect. I once had a minor panic attack at a conference moments before giving a talk -- not because of the talk, but because I realized I wouldn't be able to delete a comment or a post I just submitted and thought I might regret.

Incidentally, the chances of me making a comment (and leaving it) doesn't correlate as much with my perceived quality of my comments as much as with my anxiety threshold at that time. Since I'm not very good at gauging my anxiety response, I tend to always rewrite my comments more and more conservatively until the first idea is all but lost. Then I'll submit the comment just because I spent so much time on it.

(Please don't respond that I probably shouldn't bother commenting; I kind of know that. I'm curious if the whole thing improves over time.)

Making people have to pay to downvote will result in them feeling like they've invested in the notion that a post is bad.

That cognitive bias would certainly come in to play. Although part of the appeal of the concept is that it would partially replace a far worse contributor to that bias.

When we encounter 'bad' posts - usually a combination of bad rhetoric with disrespect - the natural reaction is make a counter signal, to punish the slight and to assert a boundary to observers, showing that you are not someone that it is ok to walk all over. Without downvotes really meaning anything the way people do this is via conflict in comments. That is to say, minor social trauma combined with public commitment. This is an order of magnitude or three more significant than spending some karma.

Seeing the karma it costs right there in simple integers puts things into perspective. How much do I really care about some silly non-sequitur or straw man that Bob is throwing at Sally? Or the patronising ignorance that Sally is throwing at me? Is it worth spending 7 karma on? Is it worth paying any attention to at all? Why don't I just ignore the crap and go find some interesting, insightful comments to engage with?

Moreover, they will be more likely to blame the individual in question for the loss.

Or less likely to experience situations where a clever rhetorician is able to bluff the casual observer into thinking that their 'opponent' is worth downvoting. If it costs to downvote you aren't going to do it unless you look more closely the comments. There are few things that can influence the way I think about someone more than if they manage to turn the crowd against me unjustifiably. To my instincts that is a big deal.

This could when combined with standard cognitive biases be quite damaging to good thinking.

I expect there would be some who would find it easier to think clearly with the actual system and others who would find it easier to think clearly in the speculative one. I have no doubt that I would be in the latter category.

In conclusion: I find counterfactual system intuitively appealing. The dynamics are too complex and too distant for our speculation to be reliable. I could just as well have my press secretary challenge yours to a duel. ;)

Making people have to pay to downvote will result in them feeling like they've invested in the notion that a post is bad.

That cognitive bias would certainly come in to play. Although part of the appeal of the concept is that it would partially replace a far worse contributor to that bias.

When we encounter 'bad' posts - usually a combination of bad rhetoric with disrespect - the natural reaction is make a counter signal, to punish the slight and to assert a boundary to observers, showing that you are not someone that it is ok to walk all over. Without downvotes really meaning anything the way people do this is via conflict in comments. That is to say, minor social trauma combined with public commitment. This is an order of magnitude or three more significant than spending some karma.

Seeing the karma it costs right there in simple integers puts things into perspective. How much do I really care about some silly non-sequitur or straw man that Bob is throwing at Sally? Or the patronising ignorance that Sally is throwing at me? Is it worth spending 7 karma on? Is it worth paying any attention to at all? Why don't I just ignore the crap and go find some interesting, insightful comments to engage with?

Moreover, they will be more likely to blame the individual in question for the loss.

Or less likely to experience situations where a clever rhetorician is able to bluff the casual observer into thinking that their 'opponent' is worth downvoting. If it costs to downvote you aren't going to do it unless you look more closely the comments. There are few things that can influence the way I think about someone more than if they manage to turn the crowd against me unjustifiably. To my instincts that is a big deal.

This could when combined with standard cognitive biases be quite damaging to good thinking.

I expect there would be some who would find it easier to think clearly with the actual system and others who would find it easier to think clearly in the speculative one. I have no doubt that I would be in the latter category.

In conclusion: I find counterfactual system intuitively appealing. The dynamics are too complex and too distant for our speculation to be reliable. I could just as well have my press secretary challenge yours to a duel. ;)

It has to be worse than a specific alternative, not just "bad". The problem being solved was anonymous users with random preferences downvoting posts/comments they don't like.

I'm not even sure if I agree! ;)

If I thought it was even remotely likely to be implemented I would have to think about it.

Edit: Italic "I"s look like slashes!

I'm not even sure if I agree! ;)

If I thought it was even remotely likely to be implemented I would have to think about it.

Would LW look much different if everyone had it?

I think so. Consider a controversial post that three people really love and three people really hate. It would be at 0 without the exponential downvote power, but very negative with it. The effect would be to make LW blander by silencing posts that offend a small number of people.

That's just considering the effects of you having the awesome exponential downvote power. Would LW look much different if everyone had it?

I was considering the general case. It is definitely hard to predict what the outcome would be. My hunch - once people adapted it would barely make any difference.

That's just considering the effects of you having the awesome exponential downvote power. Would LW look much different if everyone had it?

I was considering the general case. It is definitely hard to predict what the outcome would be. My hunch - once people adapted it would barely make any difference.

Yes unfortunatley. I don't know where it was announced, but after posting this, if I try to reply to some one else it will tell me "you have to wait another 8 minutes before submitting again". Maybe it is ten minutes, I'll check.

EDIT: It's every ten minutes actually.

And yet, of all those who downvoted, not one took the time to actually provide that valid answer.

It would seem that they took the question as a rhetorical normative claim, for which downvotes are an appropriate response.

LW needs a blog or something to list recent updates and give heads-ups about these kinds of things. Reddit does that, and it works well. This post neither belongs in the new/promoted feed, nor in the meta-thread (despite what I appeared to suggest in my original comment) - the former is inelegant and the latter impractical.

That would be a nice feature to have if it was suitably unobtrusive. But given how frequent such updates would be I don't mind them appearing as posts.