Very meta observation: in the context of a linkpost with low net positive karma, the primary message conveyed by a downvote may be “I don’t think posting this added any value to the Forum.” The article’s author is a Stanford prof, and Wired is not a small-potatoes publication. There seems to be value in people being aware of it and being given the option to read if they see fit. It appears to have enough substance that there’s decent engagement in the comments. To the extent that one wishes to convey that the article itself is unconvincing, I would consider the disagree button over the downvote button.
There’s a lot of competition the “frontpage” regarding linked articles and direct posts by forum participants. I can understand why people would think this article should not be displacing other things. I do not understand this fetishization of criticism of EA.
Fair, but there was (and arguably still is) a disconnect here between the net karma and the number of comments (was about 0.5 karma-per-comment (kpc) when I posted my comment), as well as the net karma and the evidence that a number of users actually decided the Wenar article was worth reading (based on their engagement in the comments). I think it’s likely there is a decent correlation between “should spend some on the frontpage” / “should encourage people to linkpost this stuff” on the one hand and “this is worth commenting on” / “I read the linkposted article.”
The post you referenced has 0 active comments (1 was deleted), so the kpc is NaN and there is no evidence either way about users deciding to read the article. Of course, there are a number of posts that I find over-karma’d and under-karma’d, but relatively few have the objective disconnects described above. In addition, there is little reason to think your post received (m)any downvotes at all—its karma is 16 on 7 votes, as opposed to 33 on 27 for the current post (as of me writing this sentence). So the probability that its karma has been significantly affected by a disagree-ergo-downvote phenomenon seems pretty low.
Very meta observation: in the context of a linkpost with low net positive karma, the primary message conveyed by a downvote may be “I don’t think posting this added any value to the Forum.” The article’s author is a Stanford prof, and Wired is not a small-potatoes publication. There seems to be value in people being aware of it and being given the option to read if they see fit. It appears to have enough substance that there’s decent engagement in the comments. To the extent that one wishes to convey that the article itself is unconvincing, I would consider the disagree button over the downvote button.
Thanks for sharing this, Arden.
There’s a lot of competition the “frontpage” regarding linked articles and direct posts by forum participants. I can understand why people would think this article should not be displacing other things. I do not understand this fetishization of criticism of EA.
For comparison, a link to an article by Peter Singer on businesses like Humanitix with charities in the shareholder position with some commentary that benefit charities got 16 cumulative karma. I don’t understand why every self-flagellating post has to be a top post.
Fair, but there was (and arguably still is) a disconnect here between the net karma and the number of comments (was about 0.5 karma-per-comment (kpc) when I posted my comment), as well as the net karma and the evidence that a number of users actually decided the Wenar article was worth reading (based on their engagement in the comments). I think it’s likely there is a decent correlation between “should spend some on the frontpage” / “should encourage people to linkpost this stuff” on the one hand and “this is worth commenting on” / “I read the linkposted article.”
The post you referenced has 0 active comments (1 was deleted), so the kpc is NaN and there is no evidence either way about users deciding to read the article. Of course, there are a number of posts that I find over-karma’d and under-karma’d, but relatively few have the objective disconnects described above. In addition, there is little reason to think your post received (m)any downvotes at all—its karma is 16 on 7 votes, as opposed to 33 on 27 for the current post (as of me writing this sentence). So the probability that its karma has been significantly affected by a disagree-ergo-downvote phenomenon seems pretty low.