I like that idea about information cascades. We could test how big this effect is on EA Forum, by having some bot who randomly upvotes or downvotes new posts, and measuring the final karma after some time.
There was a similar experiment with reddit (maybe you already know this).
The accumulating herding effect increased the comment’s mean rating by 25% compared to the control group comments (Figure 1C). Positively manipulated comments did receive higher ratings at all parts of the distribution, which means that they were also more likely to collect extremely high scores.
effect was present in the “politics,” “culture and society,” and “business” subreddits, but was not applicable for “economics,” “IT,” “fun,” and “general news”
Why do you think information cascades aren’t significant on EA Forum? (I hope that’s true)
I just meant that I think info cascades aren’t too important of a problem in EA more generally, not just the forum. I did not mean that I think they didn’t have large effects. Here are some reasons to expect info cascades to have limited damage in EA. Although I no longer fully endorse my earlier statements—I’d encourage people to be more worried.
The linked study is really cool! I hadn’t seen it, so thanks a lot for bringing to my attention. I would’ve very much liked for them to ask the question “for the top 10% rated comments, what proportion of them were up-treated vs control group?” To know whether the initial effect washes out for the top posts, or whether the amplification compounds with no upper bound.
The type of experiment you suggest and link to seems much more feasible for the EA forum than anything I’ve thought of, so if you’re not going to suggest it in the EA forum suggestion thread (please do, and I’ll strong upvote it), I will.
I like that idea about information cascades. We could test how big this effect is on EA Forum, by having some bot who randomly upvotes or downvotes new posts, and measuring the final karma after some time.
There was a similar experiment with reddit (maybe you already know this).
Why do you think information cascades aren’t significant on EA Forum? (I hope that’s true)
I just meant that I think info cascades aren’t too important of a problem in EA more generally, not just the forum. I did not mean that I think they didn’t have large effects. Here are some reasons to expect info cascades to have limited damage in EA. Although I no longer fully endorse my earlier statements—I’d encourage people to be more worried.
The linked study is really cool! I hadn’t seen it, so thanks a lot for bringing to my attention. I would’ve very much liked for them to ask the question “for the top 10% rated comments, what proportion of them were up-treated vs control group?” To know whether the initial effect washes out for the top posts, or whether the amplification compounds with no upper bound.
The type of experiment you suggest and link to seems much more feasible for the EA forum than anything I’ve thought of, so if you’re not going to suggest it in the EA forum suggestion thread (please do, and I’ll strong upvote it), I will.
Great!
I posted it in that thread: link
Feel free to add something there.