Downvote stalkers: Driving members away from the LessWrong community?

I am now convinced that going negative is useful.

Regarding changes to LW software, I think the process can be improved if the persons responsible will allow LWers with coding skills to volunteer their time.

We can set up a system in which mods are elected. This might provide a sufficient amount of mods and wouldn't be authoritarian.

It wasn't, no. It was a reminder to everyone else of XiXi's general MO, and the benefit he gets from convincing others that EY is a megalomaniac, using any means necessary.

You keep saying this and things like it, and not providing any evidence whatsoever when asked, directly or indirectly.

It wasn't, no. It was a reminder to everyone else of XiXi's general MO...

Circa 2005 I had a link to MIRI (then called the Singularity Institute) on my homepage. Circa 2009 I've even been advertising LessWrong.

I am on record as saying that I believe most of the sequences to consist of true and sane material. I am on record as saying that I believe LessWrong to be the most rational community.

But in 2010, due to some incidence that may not be mentioned here, I noticed that there are some extreme tendencies and beliefs that might easily outweigh all the positive qualities. I also noticed that a certain subset of people seems to have a very weird attitude when it comes to criticism pertaining Yudkowsky, MIRI or LW.

I've posted a lot of arguments that were never meant to decisively refute Yudkowksky or MIRI, but to show that many of the extraordinary claims can be weakened. The important point here is that I did not even have to do this, as the burden of evidence is not on me disprove those claims, but on the people who make the claims. They need to prove that their claims are robust and not just speculations on possible bad outcomes.

I call it an ignoble personal attack which has no place on this forum.

Sorry. It wasn't meant as an attack, just something that came to my mind reading the comment by Chris Hallquist.

My initial reply was based on the following comment by Yudkowsky:

I'm really impressed by Facebook's lovely user experience - when I get a troll comment I just click the x, block the user and it's gone without a trace and never recurs.

And regarding narcissism, the definition is: "an inflated sense of one's own importance and a deep need for admiration."

See e.g. this conversation between Ben Goertzel and Eliezer Yudkowsky (note that MIRI was formerly known as SIAI):

Striving toward total rationality and total altruism comes easily to me. […] I’ll try not to be an arrogant bastard, but I’m definitely arrogant. I’m incredibly brilliant and yes, I’m proud of it, and what’s more, I enjoy showing off and bragging about it. I don’t know if that’s who I aspire to be, but it’s surely who I am. I don’t demand that everyone acknowledge my incredible brilliance, but I’m not going to cut against the grain of my nature, either. The next time someone incredulously asks, “You think you’re so smart, huh?” I’m going to answer, “Hell yes, and I am pursuing a task appropriate to my talents.” If anyone thinks that a Friendly AI can be created by a moderately bright researcher, they have rocks in their head. This is a job for what I can only call Eliezer-class intelligence.

Also see e.g. this comment by Yudkowsky:

Unfortunately for my peace of mind and ego, people who say to me "You're the brightest person I know" are noticeably more common than people who say to me "You're the brightest person I know, and I know John Conway". Maybe someday I'll hit that level. Maybe not.

Until then... I do thank you, because when people tell me that sort of thing, it gives me the courage to keep going and keep trying to reach that higher level.

...and from his post...

When Marcello Herreshoff had known me for long enough, I asked him if he knew of anyone who struck him as substantially more natively intelligent than myself. Marcello thought for a moment and said "John Conway—I met him at a summer math camp." Darn, I thought, he thought of someone, and worse, it's some ultra-famous old guy I can't grab. I inquired how Marcello had arrived at the judgment. Marcello said, "He just struck me as having a tremendous amount of mental horsepower," and started to explain a math problem he'd had a chance to work on with Conway.

Not what I wanted to hear.

And this kind of attitude started early. See for example what he wrote in his early "biography":

I think my efforts could spell the difference between life and death for most of humanity, or even the difference between a Singularity and a lifeless, sterilized planet [...] I think that I can save the world, not just because I’m the one who happens to be making the effort, but because I’m the only one who can make the effort.

Also see this video:

So if I got hit by a meteor right now, what would happen is that Michael Vassar would take over responsibility for seeing the planet through to safety, and say ‘Yeah I’m personally just going to get this done, not going to rely on anyone else to do it for me, this is my problem, I have to handle it.’ And Marcello Herreshoff would be the one who would be tasked with recognizing another Eliezer Yudkowsky if one showed up and could take over the project, but at present I don’t know of any other person who could do that, or I’d be working with them.

See the quote I referred to, see my comment on it.

Already did.

Everyone who thinks it's perfectly functional to let yourself be driven off of participating in an internet community because some random bozo gives you a karma bombing is dysfunctional too.

It's disturbing that so many people think that's a wonderful way to live around here. Is that what "winning" is, curling up in fetal position because one person in the world doesn't like you?

Perhaps you should've read my comment; if you think that's responsive to it I can only conclude you've got a warped, exaggerated idea of what I wrote.

One: One bozo indicated his dislike. That is no indication of what the rest of the community thinks of him.

It actually is, given that that bozo is themselves part of the community.

Suppose it's a few. Suppose it's many. So what?

You see nothing reasonable about being perturbed if "many" people in your community not only dislike you but make a point of indicating that dislike?

Does everyone in the world have to like you every second of the day for you to function?

How is that rhetorical question remotely proportionate or responsive? I nowhere suggested that Ander should require "everyone in the world" to like them "every second of the day" for them "to function".

Two: Reality puts the onus on everyone to make their own decisions about their own actions.

Yet you felt the need to butt in and ultimately insult Ander & me regardless. Almost as if "Reality" were really just standing in for "buybuydandavis" all along.

Three: Invalid analogy, leaving out the key point - refraining from doing something they want to do because you're an asshole.

Ignoring the fact that if I'm being enough of an arsehole, that in itself can change "something they want to do" to "something they no longer want to do".

Let's take your "Invalid analogy" complaint as given, for argument's sake, and explicitly suppose that by running around insulting and swearing at people here I'd drive some of them away. (This incorporates what you call "the key point".) I maintain that it'd be bullet-headed to shrug off people being driven away with "It's simply dysfunctional to let yourself be controlled by the opinions of others".

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.

Can't you? Eliezer cites the easiness of clicking a button and making the other person Go Away as a major perceived advantage of posting on FB rather than LW. And even if you downvote someone on LW, well, someone can undo that with an upvote.

Sorry, didn't see this until now. In future, it works better if you put responses to a post under that post; I'm not alerted if you respond to me in another branch of the thread.

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.

I'm presuming no such thing; I was talking about the composition of LW, not the purpose of the downvote button. People's personal downvote policies are going to vary (quite a bit, really), but as long as the forum as a whole contains people with a mix of values similar to those I mentioned, their votes are going to average out to something like the behavior I described: some votes for conformity, some for contrarianism, some for unrelated norms. Note however that this doesn't take into account retributive downvoting; there needs to be policy in place to deal with that, but hey! Now there is, and we've just seen it in action.

The visibility effects of karma, I suspect, are overrated as a driver of behavior except in the case of top-level posts (where they're taken off most of the interface and become something of a pain to get to): leaving that "downvoted below threshold" notification seems to incite people's curiosity as much as anything. Some of my highest-ranked posts are replies to comments below the threshold; they wouldn't have gotten there if people weren't reading the thread.

The karma toll for replying to heavily downvoted comments does shape behavior, but I've only seen one person get that low for politely expressing political views, and he was a white supremacist.