I second Lukasâs thoughts on how this post could have been more useful. In addition, I havenât seen much evidence of the phenomena discussed by the author (those people in EA who Iâve met tend to be fairly productive, but basically all of them also have hobbies and enjoy doing silly/ânon-productive things on a regular basis). More numbers, or even a couple of specific anecdotes, would have been helpful.
I also agree with the meta-meta-note. Unless someone explains that they downvoted because they disagreed, it seems healthier to assume that a downvote indicates displeasure with an argumentâs presentation, rather than the associated opinion/âsubject matter. Few communities are more likely to say âgreat post, even though I disagreeâ than this one.
That said, if anyone reading this has a habit of downvoting arguments they disagree with, even if those arguments are presented clearly and with solid data/âlogic, Iâd weakly recommend against doing that; I think the Forum will flourish in the long run if well-crafted writing and thinking is reliably rewardedâor at least not punished.
Having spent significant time around both the EA and the LW community and having written several controversial posts and then subsequently talked with folks who downvoted those posts, I now have strong reason to believe that most downvotes are in fact âboosâ rather than anything more substantive. When people have substantive disagreements with posts they more often post comments indicating that and just donât vote on a post either way.
Iâm sure this is not universally true but itâs been my experience, so when I see downvotes on a post that isnât obviously spam, trolling, or otherwise clearly low-quality (rather than in this case just not containing much content, a kind of post that is clearly not universally downvoted because many low content posts get either neutral or positive responses, which I must assume given their lack of content is a function of agreement with the idea presented), I find it reasonable to ask âwhy âbooâ at this?â. Hence my comment as a possible explanation for more âboosâ than âyaysâ.
I agree it would be preferable if people didnât use votes as âboosâ and âyaysâ, and I think we could fix thisâmaybe by only allowing people who comment on a post to vote on it, although I think that risks creating lots of meaningless comments because people just want to vote, so there is probably some other solution that would work betterâbut unfortunately my experience suggests thatâs exactly how most people vote on posts and comments.
Thanks for your comments Aaron and Lukas. From my own experience, I have definitely encountered more people with an always-working mentality within EA than outside it. Anectodally, almost all the people (~ 10) I have met who seriously consider meal replacements as adequate alternatives to home cooked food have been EAs. This might be an inverse causal effect (ambitious people might like the EA concept more than others), but it is still problematic if people feel the need to constantly optimize themselves and work harder due to the social pressure within EA.
In my experience (which could be different from yours), meal replacements are less about productivity than things like whether you like eating food, enjoy cooking food, have time to cook food, donât want to eat food you donât like, etc. In other words, itâs more about valuing food or the process of cooking it less, rather than necessarily valuing productivity more.
I second Lukasâs thoughts on how this post could have been more useful. In addition, I havenât seen much evidence of the phenomena discussed by the author (those people in EA who Iâve met tend to be fairly productive, but basically all of them also have hobbies and enjoy doing silly/ânon-productive things on a regular basis). More numbers, or even a couple of specific anecdotes, would have been helpful.
I also agree with the meta-meta-note. Unless someone explains that they downvoted because they disagreed, it seems healthier to assume that a downvote indicates displeasure with an argumentâs presentation, rather than the associated opinion/âsubject matter. Few communities are more likely to say âgreat post, even though I disagreeâ than this one.
That said, if anyone reading this has a habit of downvoting arguments they disagree with, even if those arguments are presented clearly and with solid data/âlogic, Iâd weakly recommend against doing that; I think the Forum will flourish in the long run if well-crafted writing and thinking is reliably rewardedâor at least not punished.
(I work for CEA, but these views are my own.)
Having spent significant time around both the EA and the LW community and having written several controversial posts and then subsequently talked with folks who downvoted those posts, I now have strong reason to believe that most downvotes are in fact âboosâ rather than anything more substantive. When people have substantive disagreements with posts they more often post comments indicating that and just donât vote on a post either way.
Iâm sure this is not universally true but itâs been my experience, so when I see downvotes on a post that isnât obviously spam, trolling, or otherwise clearly low-quality (rather than in this case just not containing much content, a kind of post that is clearly not universally downvoted because many low content posts get either neutral or positive responses, which I must assume given their lack of content is a function of agreement with the idea presented), I find it reasonable to ask âwhy âbooâ at this?â. Hence my comment as a possible explanation for more âboosâ than âyaysâ.
I agree it would be preferable if people didnât use votes as âboosâ and âyaysâ, and I think we could fix thisâmaybe by only allowing people who comment on a post to vote on it, although I think that risks creating lots of meaningless comments because people just want to vote, so there is probably some other solution that would work betterâbut unfortunately my experience suggests thatâs exactly how most people vote on posts and comments.
Thanks for your comments Aaron and Lukas. From my own experience, I have definitely encountered more people with an always-working mentality within EA than outside it. Anectodally, almost all the people (~ 10) I have met who seriously consider meal replacements as adequate alternatives to home cooked food have been EAs. This might be an inverse causal effect (ambitious people might like the EA concept more than others), but it is still problematic if people feel the need to constantly optimize themselves and work harder due to the social pressure within EA.
In my experience (which could be different from yours), meal replacements are less about productivity than things like whether you like eating food, enjoy cooking food, have time to cook food, donât want to eat food you donât like, etc. In other words, itâs more about valuing food or the process of cooking it less, rather than necessarily valuing productivity more.
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