Looking at the Decade in Review, I feel like voters systematically over-rate cool but ultimately unimportant posts, and systematically under-rate complicated technical posts that have a reasonable probability of changing people’s actual prioritization decisions.
Example: “Effective Altruism is a Question (not an ideology)”, the #2 voted post, is a very cool concept and I really like it, but ultimately I don’t see how it would change anyone’s important life decisions, so I think it’s overrated in the decade review.
“Differences in the Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species”, the #35 voted post (with 1⁄3 as many votes as #2), has a significant probability of changing how people prioritize helping different species, which is very important, so I think it’s underrated.
(I do think the winning post, “Growth and the case against randomista development”, is fairly rated because if true, it suggests that all global-poverty-focused EAs should be behaving very differently.)
This pattern of voting probably happens because people tend to upvote things they like, and a post that’s mildly helpful for lots of people is easier to like than a post that’s very helpful for a smaller number of people.
(For the record, I enjoy reading the cool conceptual posts much more than the complicated technical posts.)
Looking at the Decade in Review, I feel like voters systematically over-rate cool but ultimately unimportant posts, and systematically under-rate complicated technical posts that have a reasonable probability of changing people’s actual prioritization decisions.
Example: “Effective Altruism is a Question (not an ideology)”, the #2 voted post, is a very cool concept and I really like it, but ultimately I don’t see how it would change anyone’s important life decisions, so I think it’s overrated in the decade review.
“Differences in the Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species”, the #35 voted post (with 1⁄3 as many votes as #2), has a significant probability of changing how people prioritize helping different species, which is very important, so I think it’s underrated.
(I do think the winning post, “Growth and the case against randomista development”, is fairly rated because if true, it suggests that all global-poverty-focused EAs should be behaving very differently.)
This pattern of voting probably happens because people tend to upvote things they like, and a post that’s mildly helpful for lots of people is easier to like than a post that’s very helpful for a smaller number of people.
(For the record, I enjoy reading the cool conceptual posts much more than the complicated technical posts.)