Vulkanodox's Shortform
post by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-06T17:57:18.215Z · LW · GW · 29 comments29 comments
Comments sorted by top scores.
comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-06T12:53:26.540Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Forums should not have a voting system
Any kind of upvotes or downvotes create censoring, be it intentionally or by the nature of how we think.
Intentionally:
Front pages, top, trending, etc. hide posts that are low rated. Rating a post then becomes a tool for censorship as a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of prejudice against the arguer.
by nature:
seeing a post that is voted low makes people skip over it or from the beginning rule it out as wrong or bad even if the argument is true.
Imagine this as an IRL version. When a person speaks you see their "score" that other people assign to them. People that have lower "score" are quieter and filtered away for you. If you say anything that people don't like they will rate you negatively and thus lowering your voice.
Replies from: ChristianKl, Dagon, nim, niplav↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-05-07T11:31:13.129Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Do you believe that peer review should be abolished and every journal should publish every paper that's submitted to it?
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T12:49:23.875Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
so you compare peer review to upvotes?
A peer review usually includes a peer giving a review. A review is not the same as an upvote.
For one a peer review should be made by a peer, a professional in your field that knows about the topic. An upvote can be made by anybody.
A review includes feedback, revisions, and reasoning why parts of the content are wrong. An upvote does not include this.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-05-07T13:39:43.236Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I do consider LessWrong regulars my peers so feedback I receive from them is literally peer review but that isn't the main point.
I'm asking about your general principles. Peer review is a method with the intent of preventing low quality papers to be published.
The karma system is also a method that does the same. Both go different about achieving that goal. Neither is perfect.
The argument that the process can be used to supress true arguments that are unwelcome to people in the field applies to peer review more strongly then it does apply to LessWrong karma votes. On LessWrong if I want to say something very unpopular I get people to engage publically with my ideas even so I'm downvoted and you don't get the same with academic peer review.
An upvote can be made by anybody.
While anybody can make an upvote on LessWrong the amount an upvote counts is different from person to person. There's also alignment karma which does require expertise to be allowed into the alignment forum.
For one a peer review should be made by a peer, a professional in your field that knows about the topic.
That means in many cases not someone who knows something about statistics and that's how you end up with the same basic error of not understanding how statistical significance ends up in 50% of neuroscience papers who could make the error. Statisticians who actually understand the errors don't get chosen for peer review to check for correctness because that's not what peer review is about.
Whether or not a paper follows the quality standards that a journal publically supports also has little effect on whether a paper passes peer review as the interaction which the CORSORT standards shows.
The dynamic of being a popularity contest is a core feature of academic peer review these days.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T17:33:10.080Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
So because peer review is not that good a voting system can also be not that good?
I fail to see your point arguing about a voting system creating censorship and thus it should be considered to be removed or at least changed from what is used nowadays in every forum.
Your arguments just outline that the peer review system in scientific communities is not ideal and also imposes censorship.
And still, it is by far better than a voting system in a forum. Sure in papers you might not have the perfect peer to find every error but in a voting system on a forum, you do not need to have any legitimation, qualification, or reasoning to cast your vote.
If 50% of studies by professionals have so many errors, how good is a rating by random people online?
Wrong or harmful content should be removed or labeled but voting is not good for that.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-05-07T18:05:35.031Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
you do not need to have any legitimation, qualification, or reasoning to cast your vote.
While that's true that new users can vote, the vote of a new user (so no legitimation) counts very little compared to a strong vote by an established member (who has legitimation by having posted content that LessWrong members have found valuable in the past). I do think there's an argument for not allowing new users to cast votes.
how good is a rating by random people online?
LessWrong is not made up of random people. If we wouldn't have voting then it's likely that more people who aren't posting according to the quality standards that the existing members on LessWrong have would write posts and the quality of LessWrong would go down as a result.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T19:00:43.145Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
you on purpose ignore the point that you do not know who votes.
you assume and hope that everybody is nice and votes based on objective reasoning only
you also ignore that I say that there should be another system or a changed voting system to ensure quality.
I say that you do not know what random people vote and your argument that they probably vote good is completely flawed.
And for the karma system that has some really bad implications too. Somebody with more Karma has even more power to censor.
You just shift it away from new visitors to older visitors.
How is it decided who is a good visitor and who is not? It is based on votes. It is a loop that does not work.
If my argument is that votes do not work then you can not argue against it with a system that uses votes as its basis.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-05-07T19:19:51.340Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If my argument is that votes do not work then you can not argue against it with a system that uses votes as its basis.
If you say things that are false then I point it out that you say things that are false. To make a good argument you actually have to base it on true foundations.
A system that uses karma as legitimation just isn't a system that doesn't have a concept of legitimation even if you don't like how the legitimation is setup.
you on purpose ignore the point that you do not know who votes.
With blind peer review I also don't know who votes whether my paper gets accepted. In both cases I have a broad idea.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T19:35:43.408Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
With blind peer review I also don't know who votes whether my paper gets accepted. In both cases I have a broad idea.
again with the "peer review is not good so voting can be bad too"
I already made a statement. Voting based on a random group of people that can vote without giving any reasoning does not result in objective voting. And this in return censors content.
Now you try to say that this is not that much of a problem because people who are "good" have more influence on the vote. But how is it decided who is good and should have more influence? By them getting votes. It is a circle.
How do you imagine countering the argument that people in a forum are strangers, unknown to you with the power to vote however they desire without having to reason or explain their vote?
Sure you can say that it is not that big of a problem in your opinion but that does not change the truth of my statement.
And even still, a peer review is not an upvote or downvote. You can not break down a peer review to the level of a downvote or upvote.
What do you even try to argue? You try to argue that my statement is wrong because If my argument is correct I would also have to be against peer reviews? And being against peer reviews is not correct?
This just drips with argumentum ad populum. "look at this guy, he must be against peer reviews, everybody does peer reviews so he is wrong"
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2021-05-07T19:54:20.318Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What do you even try to argue? You try to argue that my statement is wrong because If my argument is correct I would also have to be against peer reviews? And being against peer reviews is not correct?
I'm asking you about what you believe to be true. Working on understanding what the other person believes is a key aspect of having productive conversations that go towards truth. It's necessary to finding cruxes. It's one of those rationalist things that you unfortunately don't find by people who care about debating.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T20:32:30.850Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I already replied to that. Peer review is not ideal but far better than a voting system as it is implemented in forums.
Both bring censorship.
Voting should be changed because censorship is damaging to objective discussion.
Should voting be removed with no replacement to ensure quality and order in a forum? no. and I have never claimed that.
↑ comment by Dagon · 2021-05-06T17:14:55.378Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Public fora without some ranking system are useless. Fortunately, we mostly have the choice of WHICH ones to read/participate in, so if you don't like voting, you can start your own pretty easily. You'll still have the less-visible voting of what people choose to actually do.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T12:45:09.744Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Censorship requires a third party. If one releases content on a forum and a viewer going through the most recent posts decides to not read it is no censorship.
Censorship requires a third party between creator and reader that prevents distribution and access to the creation.
And your argument goes into argumentum ad populum. Just because most people prefer forums with voting systems does not mean that they are better.
It is obvious why every forum and social media site has voting. It is about the psychology of humans. Gratification and recognition are great.
Voting can serve as a tool to sort correct content from wrong one but as any voting is implemented currently they do not achieve this.
↑ comment by nim · 2021-05-06T16:25:40.461Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Forums should not have a voting system
Without voting, how would you propose that users share metadata about which content is factually accurate/inaccurate, "objectively" true/false arguments, or just unusually worth reading for people like themselves? One of the major advantages of forums is that they allow users to filter which information is likeliest to be relevant or helpful to others, rather than forcing every user to read and evaluate every post.
Sometimes when a system propagates prejudice, it can be a win to discard the system entirely. Consider the end of segregation in the US, as a minimally controversial example -- by abolishing an unfixably prejudiced system, much was gained and nothing worth keeping was lost.
But many times, it would be a net loss to completely throw out a prejudiced system rather than fixing the prejudice within it. A clear example of such a system in the real world is western medicine: It contains some bias and prejudice. Patients of certain appearances in certain regions get measurably worse medical care than people of other appearances in the same region. But the presence of bias isn't a compelling argument to abolish the whole institution of medicine, because the drawbacks of doing so would vastly outweigh any benefits of "now everybody gets the worst treatment".
I'd contend that forum voting is in the latter category: Readers derive so much benefit from having help in choosing which content is most engaging, accurate, relevant, and timely that scrapping the whole system due to the possibility of bias would eliminate many of the reasons that people bother using forums at all. (perhaps we disagree on why forums are useful or desirable to engage with?)
What might addressing bias problems look like on a forum where "a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of prejudice against the arguer"? I think that online forums offer a unique opportunity for arguers to sidestep any prejudice that they might experience elsewhere. Authors have absolute control over which forums they choose to post to, what username they choose to post under, and what tone and examples they choose to use in their posts. This allows posts to be evaluated on a combination of their logical merits and the cleverness of the author in cleansing them of prejudice-relevant content, rather than on factors outside the author's control that inevitably color conversations in person or even over audio or video media. If an argument gets downvoted because of "prejudice", the author has a trivially easy recourse: they can strip the content or context which invoked the prejudice (possibly by changing their wording or their account, possibly by going to a different forum) and try again, to see whether the negative reaction was actually due to the prejudice they assumed, or perhaps could be due to having a less sound logical argument or worse relevance to the audience than they'd initially assumed.
Imagine this as an IRL version.
IRL, people who frequently say useful and novel things about their field often become recognized as authorities, and are more likely to have a wider platform of listeners. People who frequently say things that directly disadvantage their listeners are often written off as crackpots and ignored. Sure, a given speaker can be regarded as an authority by one group and a crackpot by another if the groups have enough variation in their utility functions, but that's to be expected.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-06T16:50:51.982Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with the overall sentiment, yet there is no forum system that I'm aware of where it ensures that people have to vote on objectivity.
I do not like your statement, so I will downvote it. My downvote does not have to be reasoned or explained.
You described it nicely in the IRL version with the crackpot. One group of people concludes that the person is speaking the truth and is objectively correct. The other sees them as a crackpot because of their personal beliefs. In a forum, the second group has the power to downvote.
"a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of prejudice against the arguer"
was not formulated well
"a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of personal beliefs of the reader"
"Without voting, how would you propose that users share metadata about which content is factually accurate/inaccurate, "objectively" true/false arguments, or just unusually worth reading for people like themselves?"
random people on the internet sure are not the group of people fit for this, especially when voting takes no time or reasoning and nobody checks if it is correct or wrong.
Replies from: nim↑ comment by nim · 2021-05-06T20:26:38.884Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks, that helps me understand where you're coming from.
I do not like your statement, so I will downvote it. My downvote does not have to be reasoned or explained.
From your downvote, I learn that I presented my ideas in a way which decreased your likelihood of coming to agree with me. I can use that information to change how I present my ideas in the future if I want them to have a higher likelihood of influencing you.
"a person might make an objectively true argument but gets downvoted because of personal beliefs of the reader"
I agree that downvotes often represent personal beliefs. However, personal beliefs tend to come from experiences, and forums tend to attempt to attract groups of people with particular shared beliefs or experiences. In as much as any argument can be "objectively true", not all true arguments are useful to a particular group, and belief-based downvoting of technically-true ideas often expresses the opinion that the ideas are not useful in the forum's context.
If you believe there's a benefit to having separate forums for separate topics, true-but-not-useful is an argument for how users can keep forums on-topic. If you do not believe there's a benefit to having separate topical forums, and instead think there should only be a single forum for all conversation, true-but-not-useful downvoting in such a forum would be an antipattern since almost any truth has the potential to be useful to somebody.
random people on the internet sure are not the group of people fit for [sharing metadata about which content is... worth reading for people like themselves], especially when voting takes no time or reasoning and nobody checks if it is correct or wrong.
If each forum was populated by a truly random group of people, I would agree entirely with this claim. However, I don't believe that internet forums attract random groups. Instead, I believe that each forum attracts a group with some interest in its primary topic, and over time develops social norms that reward producing content which is particularly useful to that group. I see upvotes and downvotes as also participating in that social reward system whereby a group chooses how it wants its content to differ from randomness.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T12:58:03.062Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
again this all loops around to trusting a group of people to vote correctly.
How you define the group of people and what is correct is irrelevant.
I can agree that there should be sites where you can share things you like purely based on beliefs and personal opinions of you and a group of people.
For a forum aimed at objective discussion, voting is counterproductive, at least in the way voting is implemented in any forum nowadays.
Aim for rational reasoning and truth, yet anybody can vote based on personal beliefs and emotions to bury the truth.
And again, downvoting to keep objectively bad content away like a post that is not fitting for the category would be reasonable yet no voting system reflects that.
Replies from: nim↑ comment by nim · 2021-05-07T15:43:54.443Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
again this all loops around to trusting a group of people to vote correctly.
How you define the group of people and what is correct is irrelevant.
Huh? I think the definitions of the group and of correctness are extremely relevant.
For instance, I was on a forum for learning Chinese (a topic about which I know almost nothing), you could absolutely not trust me to vote "correctly" on a post claiming that a particular character represents a particular word. There's a "correct" answer for that question, in that most Chinese speakers will say that the character either does or doesn't approximate the word, but due to my membership in the group of "people who speak no Chinese whatsoever", I am fundamentally unqualified to be voting on such a topic.
If the definitions of the group and correctness were truly irrelevant, this single case of my being unqualified to vote would prove I was never to be trusted to vote correctly. However, if I was on a forum more germane to my local area or fields of study, my votes would become more useful. For instance, if a commenter insisted that no algorithm could ever sort a list of integers faster than O(n^2), I could not only give them a "correct" downvote but also introduce them to radix sort in the comments. I can only vote correctly on that topic because I'm in the group of people who have picked up some CS education.
Aim for rational reasoning and truth, yet anybody can vote based on personal beliefs and emotions to bury the truth.
"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" doesn't guarantee that the destruction will be easy, or that all presentations of a given truth will be equally effective at destroying what they can.
To propagate through society, a piece of truth must be presented in a way which destroys or evades common resistances to it. If a forum chose to coddle every post with a bit of truth in it, even those presented in ways which deter the audience from considering them, it would doom those truths to never leave its own echo chamber. One essential function of a forum whose goal is not only to find truths but also to encourage the rest of the world to do so is to refine the technology of presenting truths in ways that make them easier for people to use. From this perspective, merely being accurate doesn't justify promoting a truth -- a truth can only accomplish its goals if it's also presented in a way that allows people to understand and use it.
So, if a truth is packaged in a way that causes even rationality-inclined readers to reflexively downvote it based on their beliefs and emotions, that particular presentation of the truth is extremely unlikely to be worth sharing. Decouple the effectiveness of a truth's packaging from the accuracy of the truth itself, and downvotes start to look like criticism of the presentation rather than of its contents (because with bad enough presentation, readers likely couldn't get at the contents at all). Offering a truth in a really bad presentation is not unlike a chef serving customers dinner in a steel box that's welded shut -- customers will leave poor reviews (or forum users will downvote) regardless of how good the food or the truth was, because the presentation prevented them from ever getting to it.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T17:00:19.067Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
that's a lot of if and when.
it does not matter what scenarios you bring up, an upvote or downvote has no reasoning.
Sure people might use it to categorize a false claim as bad which would be helpful.
But people can also use it to downvote based on their personal beliefs.
You can not prove either. Anybody can make a vote for any reason that the person has.
you can not prove if a vote has a beneficial effect or a negative one.
I can take 10 of my friends and downvote every one of your new posts and nobody will ever see them again.
A vote is anonymous, available to everybody, and can be done with good or bad intentions.
So it comes down to who does the voting.
And nobody controls who votes. It is a random group of people. And a random group of people never votes correctly.
For instance, I was on a forum for learning Chinese (a topic about which I know almost nothing), you could absolutely not trust me to vote "correctly" on a post claiming that a particular character represents a particular word. There's a "correct" answer for that question, in that most Chinese speakers will say that the character either does or doesn't approximate the word, but due to my membership in the group of "people who speak no Chinese whatsoever", I am fundamentally unqualified to be voting on such a topic.
nobody controls who votes. I can go to the Chinese forum and vote wrongly.
If the definitions of the group and correctness were truly irrelevant, this single case of my being unqualified to vote would prove I was never to be trusted to vote correctly.
the whole point is that in a vote nothing is proven or not. Nobody knows if you are qualified or not. Nobody knows if the vote you gave is justified by reasoning or not.
All the problems you outline can be solved but not through a voting system as they are implemented currently. The voting systems as they are now are rather bad at solving the challenges you outline and in addition foster censorship.
If anything your arguments are more proof of why current voting systems are bad. Why do you trust a random group of people to decide what is a good presentation and what not? How do you know that they vote based on the presentation and not just because they do like the topic because it is against their personal beliefs?
Replies from: nim↑ comment by nim · 2021-05-07T23:38:16.179Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
it does not matter what scenarios you bring up, an upvote or downvote has no reasoning. Anybody can make a vote for any reason that the person has.
No reason, or any reason? These two statements seem to contradict one another?
So it comes down to who does the voting.
I agree! That's why forums with critical mass of people who prefer to vote based on certain values are considered so enjoyable by some of us.
And nobody controls who votes.
No one person controls who votes; that would be censorship. What controls who votes on a given forum is a complex social dynamic of who finds that forum a rewarding place to hang out, and upvotes are part of that social reward system among their other functions.
I can take 10 of my friends and downvote every one of your new posts and nobody will ever see them again.
Sure, and then I could get some friends to vote them back up, or just ditch this alias and come back with a different name if I wanted the ideas to be seen. That's the nice thing about being on the internet.
Why do you trust a random group of people to decide what is a good presentation and what not? How do you know that they vote based on the presentation and not just because they do like the topic because it is against their personal beliefs?
I trust groups to have inertia. For instance, I trust the LessWrong crowd to give far more upvotes to a post about AI than a post about what species of edible dahlias are best suited to zone 9a (even if the gardening post has better data behind it), but there are other forums where the opposite would be the case. People who like the group's inertia tend to add to it, and people who find it intolerable tend to leave.
I think people do vote based on factors including liking the topic, liking the presentation, or the post's agreement with their personal beliefs! I think the point of forums is to find a bunch of people whose interests align well enough with yours that their enjoyment of a particular post is a good predictor of your enjoyment of it.
If you want forum software where every vote has to be annotated with a logical proof of why it was given, nobody's stopping you from building it.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-08T10:07:52.263Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
No reason, or any reason? These two statements seem to contradict one another?
no reasoning as in people do not have to lay out a logical proof why it was given.
any reason as in people vote based on emotions not just objectivity
still, it comes down to you thinking and hoping that everybody is nice. Which is a flaw. You have no argument against my statement other than "it is probably not that bad because people are nice, I think"
which is not an argument and has nothing to do with objectivity.
Ah yes, I love that usual "argument":
"why don't you do it better?" "nobody is stopping you from doing it yourself" "if you think it is bad you have to bring up ways to make it better"
completely irrelevant to discuss a critique. I'm pretty sure there is a name for such replies but I don't remember it.
Replies from: nim↑ comment by nim · 2021-05-09T15:21:39.216Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"it is probably not that bad because people are nice, I think"
Where have I claimed that everyone was nice? To phrase my argument about how forums work in terms of niceness, it would be:
All individuals are nice in some ways and non-nice in others. When a forum lets people be nice to content they like, and mean to content they dislike, it causes the content on that forum to take on characteristics that reflect the characteristics of the group. People tend to be nice to content which is useful to them or makes them feel good, and mean to content which wastes their time or makes them feel bad. This means that by finding forums populated by voters who are similar to me in a relevant way, their votes can make me more likely to see content which is useful to me or makes me feel good,and less likely to see content which wastes my time or makes me feel bad.
I specifically desire to participate in forums where people who create content I'd find useless or time-wasting are downvoted! "false" and "incorrectly reasoned" are subsets of useless content, but they are not the only useless content that I prefer to avoid.
And if I wish to see exactly how a community votes in order to decide whether to engage with it, I can simply sort the content by lowest scoring, and if there's stuff in there that I think shouldn't have been downvoted so badly, I can choose to go converse on a different forum with a voting style more consistent with my values.
if you think it is bad you have to bring up ways to make it better
The only way to prove conclusively that something could be improved upon is to suggest an improvement.
I could critique breathing by saying it's a bad idea because breathing pollutants is a common cause of sickness. But considering that breathing is so much better than not breathing at all, my critique would be useless unless I could suggest some alternative. I could suggest some alternative, like hooking ourselves up to blood-oxygenating machines instead of breathing, and then we could have an interesting conversation about whether that would actually be better. But without a suggestion, it's not a critique at all, it's just whining.
Or I could say it'd be better if we all learned to levitate and floated around instead of walking, because we wouldn't have to wear shoes. Sure, levitating would be neat, but I'd be wasting time speculating about it unless I could suggest how to do it. Similarly, having a forum where votes had to be proven and based in logic would be neat, but every way of building such software that I can imagine would be infeasible to implement in a way that people would actually bother using. The best way to change my current belief of "I don't know how anyone could build that" would be to offer me new information about how a software design for the purpose which didn't suck could work.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-10T13:09:51.803Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Where have I claimed that everyone was nice?
your whole argument is based on the flaw that you trust people to vote correctly (however correct is defined). Or in other words, you trust that people are nice from your perspective.
The only way to prove conclusively that something could be improved upon is to suggest an improvement.
now we move from objectivism to what is good. The complete opposite.
Levitating would be better and that is the objective truth.
Breathing pollutants is bad and that is the objective truth.
A forum with no voting has less to no censorship and that is the objective truth.
"a design which didn't suck" comes down to a whole lot of subjective factors. As I already said forums with votes are preferred by people because votes are great as they give gratification and reward. This is a subjective topic.
What people like and do not like does not change the fact that votes create censorship.
You can not say that "votes create censorship" is wrong because people would not like a system without voting.
This is just disguised argumentum ad populum. Many people have to like it otherwise it is not true.
The only way to prove conclusively that something could be improved upon is to suggest an improvement.
that is the whole fallacy. A bad aspect can be definitely described without suggesting a solution. The problem and the solution are two entities. A math formula can be proven wrong without giving a solution.
Votes create censorship is true even without a solution for it.
How would you even turn this around? What about problems where nobody found a solution yet? By your definition, they are not a problem, because one can not define a solution for them.
Replies from: nim↑ comment by nim · 2021-05-10T16:20:10.923Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks, now I see exactly where we diverge.
your whole argument is based on the flaw that you trust people to vote correctly (however correct is defined).
I trust groups to vote with relative consistency, and believe that if you have enough consistent-ish groups, it's possible to find a group whose consistency adequately approximates your own idea of correctness.
You can not say that "votes create censorship" is wrong because people would not like a system without voting.
If you're defining censorship as the phenomenon created by all voting done by humans, then sure, "votes create censorship" is a useful axiom.
Our difference of opinion seems to be that you're starting with the abstract notions like "truth", "good", or "right", and building toward the concrete from there. I'm starting with the concrete notions of "beneficial" and "useful", and trying to build toward abstract notions from there. No argument about what's useful or beneficial will influence someone who prioritizes other values over those, so I'll stop wasting your time by making them.
Another option of course would be for me to try to start in "truth"/"good"/"right" concept-space and move toward the concrete from there, but every other time I've tried to have that sort of conversation online, it's eventually turned out that each participant in the conversation had differences of opinion about the way that the truth/good/right concept area works which only come to light once the conversation makes it to the specifics. Arguing from truth/good/right down to concrete examples only to have to repeat the whole process when the definitions turn out to have been inadequately specified wouldn't be true/good/right by my own standards, so I won't :)
↑ comment by niplav · 2021-05-06T13:15:05.416Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How is filtering for quality/truth performed, then? The only website that approaches non-censorship is 4chan, and while I think that 4chan is probably more valuable than not (although I see why that could be debatable), I don't think it's the only viable way of organizing a website.
The comparison with the real world falls flat due to the much greater amount of content on internet fora.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-06T15:30:51.534Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
trade-offs have to be made to make a site more usable but categorization is better in that regard. A forum can be separated into different topics and divided into different content forms like posts, Shortforms, questions, etc.
And I will say right away because I know people will comment on it. Categorization is not censorship. When there is a voting system a third party has control over who sees the content or not. A categorization is chosen by the creator and allows people to seek out that content based on it. Censorship requires a third party between creator and reader.
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.
The comparison does not fall flat because of the greater amount of content on the internet because this in itself already assumes that the content on the internet has to be ranked from "good" to "bad" so you can look at the "good" content in the time you have. Which just circles back to who decides what is "good" and "bad". In real life, you do not have this. You have to hear what other people say without a rating presented beforehand.
Also on a personal note, I think it is harmful if we strive to just look at the "good" content. It creates echo chambers and bubbles. For discussions, we do not gain much if we just look at the correct reasonings and do not look at the errors made in the wrong ones.
Replies from: niplav↑ comment by niplav · 2021-05-06T21:35:49.513Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
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 [LW · GW]). 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.
Replies from: Vulkanodox↑ comment by Vulkanodox · 2021-05-07T13:20:33.007Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
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.
Replies from: niplav