If you think my arguments are incorrect, it would be useful to explain how rather than silently downvoting.
I am starting to wonder if I will be downvoted on the EA Forum any time I point out that rape is bad. That can’t be why people downvote these comments, right?
I’m glad you came back to look at this discussion again because I found your comments here (and generally) really valuable. I refrained from upvoting your comment because you called the comparison “pretty ridiculous”. I would feel attacked if you called my reasoning ridiculous and would be less able to constructively argue with you.
I think you are right when pointing out that some topics are much more sensitive to many more people, and EAs being more careful around those topics makes our community more welcoming to more people. That said, I understood vaniver’s point was to take an example where most people reading it would not feel like it is a sensitive topic, and *even there* you might upset some people (e.g. if they stumble on a discussion comparing the death of five vs. one). So the solution should not be to punish/deplatform somebody that discussed a topic in a way that was upsetting for someone, and going forward stop people from thinking publically when touching potentially upsetting topics, but something else.
I’m fairly sure the real story is much better than that, although still bad in objective terms: In culture war threads, the typical norms re karma roughly morph into ‘barely restricted tribal warfare’. So people have much lower thresholds both to slavishly upvote their ‘team’,and to downvote the opposing one.
I downvoted the above comment by Khorton (not the one asking for explanations, but the one complaining about the comparison of Trolley’s and rape), and think Larks explained part of the reason pretty well. I read it in substantial parts as an implicit accusation of Robin to be in support of rape, and also seemed to itself misunderstand Vaniver’s comment, which wasn’t at all emphasizing a dimension of trolley problems that made a comparison with rape unfitting, and doing so in a pretty accusatory way (which meerpirat clarified below).
I agree that voting quality somewhat deteriorates in more heated debates, but I think this characterization of how voting happens is too uncharitable. I try pretty hard to vote carefully, and often change my votes multiple times on a thread if I later on realize I was too quick to judge something or misunderstood someone, and really spend a lot of time reconsidering and thinking about my voting behavior with the health of the broader discourse in mind, so I am quite confident about my own voting behavior being mischaracterized by the above.
I’ve also talked to many other people active on LessWrong and the EA Forum over the years, and a lot of people seem to put a lot of effort into how they vote, so I am also reasonably confident many others also spend substantial time thinking about their voting in a way that really isn’t well-characterized by “roughly morphing barely restricted tribal warfare”.
If you think my arguments are incorrect, it would be useful to explain how rather than silently downvoting.
I am starting to wonder if I will be downvoted on the EA Forum any time I point out that rape is bad. That can’t be why people downvote these comments, right?
I’m glad you came back to look at this discussion again because I found your comments here (and generally) really valuable. I refrained from upvoting your comment because you called the comparison “pretty ridiculous”. I would feel attacked if you called my reasoning ridiculous and would be less able to constructively argue with you.
I think you are right when pointing out that some topics are much more sensitive to many more people, and EAs being more careful around those topics makes our community more welcoming to more people. That said, I understood vaniver’s point was to take an example where most people reading it would not feel like it is a sensitive topic, and *even there* you might upset some people (e.g. if they stumble on a discussion comparing the death of five vs. one). So the solution should not be to punish/deplatform somebody that discussed a topic in a way that was upsetting for someone, and going forward stop people from thinking publically when touching potentially upsetting topics, but something else.
That’s a very helpful overview, thank you.
I’m fairly sure the real story is much better than that, although still bad in objective terms: In culture war threads, the typical norms re karma roughly morph into ‘barely restricted tribal warfare’. So people have much lower thresholds both to slavishly upvote their ‘team’,and to downvote the opposing one.
I downvoted the above comment by Khorton (not the one asking for explanations, but the one complaining about the comparison of Trolley’s and rape), and think Larks explained part of the reason pretty well. I read it in substantial parts as an implicit accusation of Robin to be in support of rape, and also seemed to itself misunderstand Vaniver’s comment, which wasn’t at all emphasizing a dimension of trolley problems that made a comparison with rape unfitting, and doing so in a pretty accusatory way (which meerpirat clarified below).
I agree that voting quality somewhat deteriorates in more heated debates, but I think this characterization of how voting happens is too uncharitable. I try pretty hard to vote carefully, and often change my votes multiple times on a thread if I later on realize I was too quick to judge something or misunderstood someone, and really spend a lot of time reconsidering and thinking about my voting behavior with the health of the broader discourse in mind, so I am quite confident about my own voting behavior being mischaracterized by the above.
I’ve also talked to many other people active on LessWrong and the EA Forum over the years, and a lot of people seem to put a lot of effort into how they vote, so I am also reasonably confident many others also spend substantial time thinking about their voting in a way that really isn’t well-characterized by “roughly morphing barely restricted tribal warfare”.
I am reasonably confident that this is the best first-order explanation.
EDIT: Habryka’s comment makes me less sure that this is true.