Ok, this comment is ideological (but really interesting).
This comment is pushing on a lot of things, please don’t take any of this personally .
(or take it personally if you’re one of the top people listed here and fighting me!)
So below is the actual list of top karma users.
BIG CAVEATS:
I am happy to ruthlessly, mercilessly attack, the top ranked person there, on substantial issues like on their vision of the forum. Like, karma means nothing in the real world (but for onlookers, my choice is wildly not career optimal[1]).
Some people listed are sort of dumb-dumbs.
This list is missing the vast majority (95%) of the talented EAs and people just contributing in a public way, much less those who don’t post or blog.
The ranking and composition could be drastically improved
But, yes, contra you, I would say that this list of people do have better and reasonable views of reality than the average person and probably average EA.
More generally, this is positively correlated with karma.
Secondly, importantly, we don’t need EAs on the forum to have the best “view of reality”.
We need EAs to have the best views of generating impact, such as creating good meta systems, avoiding traps, driving good culture, allocating funding correctly, attracting real outside talent, and appointing EAs and others to be impactful in reality.
Another issue is that there isn’t really a good way to resolve “beef” between EAs right now.
Funders and other senior EAs, in the most prosocial, prudent way, are wary of this bad behavior and consequent effects (lock-in). So it’s really not career optimal to just randomly fight and be disagreeable.
I think I would disagree with this. At the very least, I think people on the list write pretty useful posts and comments.
Still, the ranking doesn’t really match who I think consistently makes the most valuable comments or posts, and I think it reflects volume too much. I’m probably as high as I am mainly because of a large number of comments that got 1 or 2 regular upvotes (I’ve made the 5th most comments among EA Forum users).
(I don’t think people should be penalized for making posts or comments that don’t get much or any votes; this would discourage writing on technical or niche topics, and commenting on posts that aren’t getting much attention anymore or never did. This is why I proposed dividing total karma by number of votes on your comments/posts, rather than dividing total karma by the number of your comments/posts.)
This list is missing the vast majority (95%) of the talented EAs and people just contributing in a public way, much less those who don’t post or blog.
I agree.
The ranking and composition could be drastically improved
I agree that they could probably be improved substantially. I’m not sure about “drastically”, but I think “substantially” is enough to do something about it.
Ok, this comment is ideological (but really interesting).
This comment is pushing on a lot of things, please don’t take any of this personally .
(or take it personally if you’re one of the top people listed here and fighting me!)
So below is the actual list of top karma users.
BIG CAVEATS:
I am happy to ruthlessly, mercilessly attack, the top ranked person there, on substantial issues like on their vision of the forum. Like, karma means nothing in the real world (but for onlookers, my choice is wildly not career optimal[1]).
Some people listed are sort of dumb-dumbs.
This list is missing the vast majority (95%) of the talented EAs and people just contributing in a public way, much less those who don’t post or blog.
The ranking and composition could be drastically improved
But, yes, contra you, I would say that this list of people do have better and reasonable views of reality than the average person and probably average EA.
More generally, this is positively correlated with karma.
Secondly, importantly, we don’t need EAs on the forum to have the best “view of reality”.
We need EAs to have the best views of generating impact, such as creating good meta systems, avoiding traps, driving good culture, allocating funding correctly, attracting real outside talent, and appointing EAs and others to be impactful in reality.
Another issue is that there isn’t really a good way to resolve “beef” between EAs right now.
Funders and other senior EAs, in the most prosocial, prudent way, are wary of this bad behavior and consequent effects (lock-in). So it’s really not career optimal to just randomly fight and be disagreeable.
I think I would disagree with this. At the very least, I think people on the list write pretty useful posts and comments.
Still, the ranking doesn’t really match who I think consistently makes the most valuable comments or posts, and I think it reflects volume too much. I’m probably as high as I am mainly because of a large number of comments that got 1 or 2 regular upvotes (I’ve made the 5th most comments among EA Forum users).
(I don’t think people should be penalized for making posts or comments that don’t get much or any votes; this would discourage writing on technical or niche topics, and commenting on posts that aren’t getting much attention anymore or never did. This is why I proposed dividing total karma by number of votes on your comments/posts, rather than dividing total karma by the number of your comments/posts.)
I agree.
I agree that they could probably be improved substantially. I’m not sure about “drastically”, but I think “substantially” is enough to do something about it.
Thank you for the corrections, which I agree with. It is generous of you to graciously indulge my comment.
Ok, debate aside as it’s 2am here, where does one get these data?
It’s on Issa Rice’s site: https://eaforum.issarice.com/userlist?sort=karma