Noise is certainly a viable alternative explanation, which is why I limited myself to “raises some concerns about possible brigading.”[1]
I don’t think a mod investigation would be a good use of time here. The mods have pointed out a past influx of new accounts triggered by this topic being hot, along with possible non-representative voting patterns on this topic before. In contrast to events at the time of the Bostrom affair, it would be much harder to rule in / rule out irregular voting with confidence where the activity volume is much smaller.
However, since people do cite to Forum upvotes/downvotes as evidence of broader EA sentiment (whether justified or not), I think it’s fair to point vote distortion out as a possibility.
I note that there is a range of opinions about what count as brigading. There are, for instance, places on Reddit where voting in the original subreddit if you learn about crossposted content from a different subreddit is counted as brigading. That is not my own view (although I understand why Reddit communities have operationalized it that way for administrability reasons). However, I do think it is possible for brigading to occur without specific intent or instruction. In particular, people whose involvement with the Forum is limited to threads on their pet issue and who are otherwise uninvolved with EA should not be voting in my opinion.
Noise is certainly a viable alternative explanation, which is why I limited myself to “raises some concerns about possible brigading.”[1]
I don’t think a mod investigation would be a good use of time here. The mods have pointed out a past influx of new accounts triggered by this topic being hot, along with possible non-representative voting patterns on this topic before. In contrast to events at the time of the Bostrom affair, it would be much harder to rule in / rule out irregular voting with confidence where the activity volume is much smaller.
However, since people do cite to Forum upvotes/downvotes as evidence of broader EA sentiment (whether justified or not), I think it’s fair to point vote distortion out as a possibility.
I note that there is a range of opinions about what count as brigading. There are, for instance, places on Reddit where voting in the original subreddit if you learn about crossposted content from a different subreddit is counted as brigading. That is not my own view (although I understand why Reddit communities have operationalized it that way for administrability reasons). However, I do think it is possible for brigading to occur without specific intent or instruction. In particular, people whose involvement with the Forum is limited to threads on their pet issue and who are otherwise uninvolved with EA should not be voting in my opinion.