I thought this post was really bad, basically for the reasons described by Rohin in his comment. I think it’s pretty sad that that post has positive karma.
I actually strong upvoted that post, because I wanted to see more engagement with the topic, decision-making under deep uncertainty, since that’s a major point in my skepticism of strong longtermism. I just reduced my vote to a regular upvote. It’s worth noting that Rohin’s comment had more karma than the post itself (even before I reduced my vote).
I pretty much agree with your OP. Regarding that post in particular, I am uncertain about whether it’s a good or bad post. It’s bad in the sense that its author doesn’t seem to have a great grasp of longtermism, and the post basically doesn’t move the conversation forward at all. It’s good in the sense that it’s engaging with an important question, and the author clearly put some effort into it. I don’t know how to balance these considerations.
I agree that post is low-quality in some sense (which is why I didn’t upvote it), but my impression is that its central flaw is being misinformed, in a way that’s fairly easy to identify. I’m more worried about criticism where it’s not even clear how much I agree with the criticism or where it’s socially costly to argue against the criticism because of the way it has been framed.
It also looks like the post got a fair number of downvotes, and that its karma is way lower than for other posts by the same author or on similar topics. So it actually seems to me the karma system is working well in that case.
(Possibly there is an issue where “has a fair number of downvotes” on the EA FOrum corresponds to “has zero karma” in fora with different voting norms/rules, and so the former here appearing too positive if one is more used to fora with the latter norm. Conversely I used to be confused why posts on the Alignment Forum that seemed great to me had more votes than karma score.)
It also looks like the post got a fair number of downvotes, and that its karma is way lower than for other posts by the same author or on similar topics. So it actually seems to me the karma system is working well in that case.
That’s what I thought as well. The top critical comment also has more karma than the top level post, which I have always considered to be functionally equivalent to a top level post being below par.
can you show one actual example of what exactly you mean?
I thought this post was really bad, basically for the reasons described by Rohin in his comment. I think it’s pretty sad that that post has positive karma.
I actually strong upvoted that post, because I wanted to see more engagement with the topic, decision-making under deep uncertainty, since that’s a major point in my skepticism of strong longtermism. I just reduced my vote to a regular upvote. It’s worth noting that Rohin’s comment had more karma than the post itself (even before I reduced my vote).
I pretty much agree with your OP. Regarding that post in particular, I am uncertain about whether it’s a good or bad post. It’s bad in the sense that its author doesn’t seem to have a great grasp of longtermism, and the post basically doesn’t move the conversation forward at all. It’s good in the sense that it’s engaging with an important question, and the author clearly put some effort into it. I don’t know how to balance these considerations.
I agree that post is low-quality in some sense (which is why I didn’t upvote it), but my impression is that its central flaw is being misinformed, in a way that’s fairly easy to identify. I’m more worried about criticism where it’s not even clear how much I agree with the criticism or where it’s socially costly to argue against the criticism because of the way it has been framed.
It also looks like the post got a fair number of downvotes, and that its karma is way lower than for other posts by the same author or on similar topics. So it actually seems to me the karma system is working well in that case.
(Possibly there is an issue where “has a fair number of downvotes” on the EA FOrum corresponds to “has zero karma” in fora with different voting norms/rules, and so the former here appearing too positive if one is more used to fora with the latter norm. Conversely I used to be confused why posts on the Alignment Forum that seemed great to me had more votes than karma score.)
That’s what I thought as well. The top critical comment also has more karma than the top level post, which I have always considered to be functionally equivalent to a top level post being below par.