I also want to emphasize that the main thing I wanted to highlight with the example was not that the regular karma was downvoted, but rather that the disagreement karma was, and that the content of the comment was not one that I was pretty confident an informed EA wouldn’t disagree with (namely that climate change is not neglected and that directing money to more effective causes was valuable.)
I saw this as another example of a pattern I think I may have perceived of “agreement-karma voting degradation.” My impression was that the voting patterns I’ve seen (lower-quality agreement-karma voting) is evidence that EA Forum voters are less familiar with EA ideas than they once were.
Note though that Kirsten pointed out an alternative hypothesis for disagreement in her answer: “I think there have been some weird examples of voting recently, but this isn’t one! I’ve long been annoyed with the naivite of EAs who think unsolicited outreach to billionaires will have a positive impact on the world.”
So I’ve updated toward thinking that the example I gave as evidence of my perceived trend in bad agreement-karma voting wasn’t actually a good example. In this case, the disagreement votes could be explained by people with Kirsten’s view, rather than people disagreeing that climate change was neglected. (Though there are also EA Forum who do think climate change is neglected, per other answers this question received.)
I also want to emphasize that the main thing I wanted to highlight with the example was not that the regular karma was downvoted, but rather that the disagreement karma was, and that the content of the comment was not one that I was pretty confident an informed EA wouldn’t disagree with (namely that climate change is not neglected and that directing money to more effective causes was valuable.)
I saw this as another example of a pattern I think I may have perceived of “agreement-karma voting degradation.” My impression was that the voting patterns I’ve seen (lower-quality agreement-karma voting) is evidence that EA Forum voters are less familiar with EA ideas than they once were.
Note though that Kirsten pointed out an alternative hypothesis for disagreement in her answer: “I think there have been some weird examples of voting recently, but this isn’t one! I’ve long been annoyed with the naivite of EAs who think unsolicited outreach to billionaires will have a positive impact on the world.”
So I’ve updated toward thinking that the example I gave as evidence of my perceived trend in bad agreement-karma voting wasn’t actually a good example. In this case, the disagreement votes could be explained by people with Kirsten’s view, rather than people disagreeing that climate change was neglected. (Though there are also EA Forum who do think climate change is neglected, per other answers this question received.)