I would rather have no increases at all, or perhaps a nominal one (eg an unlock of a 2-karma strong upvote) after a relatively cursory amount of karma—just enough to prove that you’re not a troll.
I do not think that my contributions to this forum merit me having ~3.5x as much weight as someone like Jobst Heitzig just because he’s too busy with a successful academic career to build up a backlog on this forum. Weighted karma selects for people whose time has low market value in the same way that long job interviews do.
Karma weighting also encourages Goodharting and rewards the people best at it.
I don’t know about unrepresentative. New poster to this forum run a gamut from ‘probably above averagely smart’ to ‘extremely intelligent and thoughtful’. Obviously we’re going to have far more of the former, but we should also expect some number of the latter—and the karma system hides both.
I think Scott’s argument for for openness to eccentrics on the ground that a couple of great ideas have far more positive value than a whole bunch of negative ones have negative value in generalises to an argument for being open to ‘eccentrics’ who comprise large numbers of new or intermittent posters.
I think Scott’s argument for for openness to eccentrics on the ground that a couple of great ideas have far more positive value than a whole bunch of negative ones have negative value in generalises to an argument for being open to ‘eccentrics’ who comprise large numbers of new or intermittent posters.
You’ve got to consider the base rates. Most eccentrics are actually just people with ungrounded ideas that are wrong since it’s easy to have wild ideas and hard to have correct ideas and thus even harder to have wild and correct ideas.
In the old days of Less Wrong excess criticism was actually a huge problem and did silence a bunch of folks incorrectly. EAF and Less Wrong (which has basically the same cultural norms) have this problem to a much lesser extent now due a few structural changes:
new posters don’t post directly to the front page and instead only can post there once they get enough karma or explicit approval by moderators
this lets new posters work out the site norms without being exposed to the full brunt of the community
weighted voting also allows respected users to correct errors on their own, so when they see something of value they can give it a strong upvote rather than it languishing due to five other new people voting it down
If your concern is that the site is not making it easy enough for eccentrics with good ideas to post here, I can say from the experience of the way Less Wrong used to run that it’s likely they’d have an even worse time if it weren’t for weighted voting.
You’ve got to consider the base rates. Most eccentrics are actually just people with ungrounded ideas that are wrong since it’s easy to have wild ideas and hard to have correct ideas and thus even harder to have wild and correct ideas.
It is tiresome to have conversations in which you assume I only started thinking about this yesterday and haven’t considered basic epistemic concepts.
a) I am not talking about actual eccentrics; I’m drawing the analogy of a gestalt entity mimicking (an intelligent) eccentric. You don’t have to agree that the tradeoff is worthwhile, but please claim that about the tradeoff I’m proposing, not some bizarre one where we go recruiting anyone who has sufficiently heterodox ideas.
b) I am not necessarily suggesting removing the karma system. I’m suggesting toning it down, which could easily be accompanied by other measures to help users find the content they’d most like to see. There’s plenty of room for experimentation—the forum seems to have been stuck in a local maximum (at best—perhaps not a maximum) for the last few years, and CEA should have the resources for some A/B testing of new ideas.
c) Plenty of pre-Reddit internet forums have been successful in pursuing their goal with no karma system at all, let alone a weighted one. Looking at the current posts on the front page of the EA Reddit, only one is critical of EA, and that’s the same Bostrom discussion that’s been going on here. So I don’t see good empirical evidence that toning down the karma system would create the kind of wild west you fear.
This is a mechanism for maintaining cultural continuity.
Karma represents how much the community trusts you, and in return, because you are trusted, you’re granted greater ability to influence what others see because your judgement has been vetted over a long series of posts. The increase in voting power is roughly logarithmic with karma, so the increased influence in practice hits diminishing returns pretty quickly.
If we take this away it allows the culture of the site to drift more quickly, say because there’s a large influx of new folks. Right now existing members can curate what happens on the Forum. If we take away the current voting structure, we’re at greater risk of this site becoming less the site the existing user base wants.
I don’t speak for the Forum by any means, but as I see it we’re trying to create a space here to talk about certain things in a certain way, and that means we want new people to learn the norms and be part of what exists first before they try to change it, since outsiders often fail to understand why things work the way they do until they’ve gotten enough experience to see how the existing mechnismism make things work. Once you understand how things work, it becomes possible to try to change things in ways that keeps what works and changes what doesn’t. The voting mechanism is downstream of this and is an important tool of the membership to curate the site.
That said, you can also just ignore the votes if you don’t agree with them and read whatever you want.
I really don’t think the libertarian “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else” works here as the EA forum is pretty much the place where EA discussions are held. Sure, they happen on twitter and reddit too but you have to admit it’s not the same. Most discussions start here and are then picked up there.
I agree with your other arguments, I don’t want the culture of the site to drift too quickly because of a large influx of new folks. But why wouldn’t a cut off be sufficient for that? I don’t see why the power has to keep on increasing after, say, a 200 karma. Because at that point value lock-in might become an issue. Reminds me a bit of the average age of US senators being 64 years old. Not too dismiss the wisdom of experienced people, but insights from new folks is important too.
Sure, not everyone likes curated gardens. If that’s not the kind of site you want, there’s other places. Reddit, for example, has active communities that operate under different norms.
The folks who started the Forum prefer the sort of structure it has. If you want something else and you don’t have a convincing argument that convinces us, you’re free to participate in discussions elsewhere.
‘There are other places’ seems like a terrible benchmark to judge by. Reddit is basically the only other active forum on the internet for EA discussion and nowhere else has any chance of materially affecting EA culture. The existence of this place suppresses alternatives—I used to run a utilitarianism forum that basically folded into this because it didn’t seem sensible at the time to compete with people we almost totally agreed with.
Posting a a single unevidenced LW argument as though it were scripture as an argument against being exposed to a wider range of opinions seems like a poor epistemic practice. In any case, that thread is about banning, which I’ve become more sympathetic to, and which is totally unrelated to the karma system.
New users’ strong vote equals two votes, and the moment you get a 100 karma it equals 5 votes. But after that it doesn’t keep increasing.
(Agree vote this even if you don’t agree with the specific numbers but just the general gist of it.)
I would rather have no increases at all, or perhaps a nominal one (eg an unlock of a 2-karma strong upvote) after a relatively cursory amount of karma—just enough to prove that you’re not a troll.
I do not think that my contributions to this forum merit me having ~3.5x as much weight as someone like Jobst Heitzig just because he’s too busy with a successful academic career to build up a backlog on this forum. Weighted karma selects for people whose time has low market value in the same way that long job interviews do.
Karma weighting also encourages Goodharting and rewards the people best at it.
I think Jobst is very unrepresentative. From the recommendations, he’s getting I wish I could transfer some of my karma to him.
I don’t know about unrepresentative. New poster to this forum run a gamut from ‘probably above averagely smart’ to ‘extremely intelligent and thoughtful’. Obviously we’re going to have far more of the former, but we should also expect some number of the latter—and the karma system hides both.
I think Scott’s argument for for openness to eccentrics on the ground that a couple of great ideas have far more positive value than a whole bunch of negative ones have negative value in generalises to an argument for being open to ‘eccentrics’ who comprise large numbers of new or intermittent posters.
You’ve got to consider the base rates. Most eccentrics are actually just people with ungrounded ideas that are wrong since it’s easy to have wild ideas and hard to have correct ideas and thus even harder to have wild and correct ideas.
In the old days of Less Wrong excess criticism was actually a huge problem and did silence a bunch of folks incorrectly. EAF and Less Wrong (which has basically the same cultural norms) have this problem to a much lesser extent now due a few structural changes:
new posters don’t post directly to the front page and instead only can post there once they get enough karma or explicit approval by moderators
this lets new posters work out the site norms without being exposed to the full brunt of the community
weighted voting also allows respected users to correct errors on their own, so when they see something of value they can give it a strong upvote rather than it languishing due to five other new people voting it down
If your concern is that the site is not making it easy enough for eccentrics with good ideas to post here, I can say from the experience of the way Less Wrong used to run that it’s likely they’d have an even worse time if it weren’t for weighted voting.
It is tiresome to have conversations in which you assume I only started thinking about this yesterday and haven’t considered basic epistemic concepts.
a) I am not talking about actual eccentrics; I’m drawing the analogy of a gestalt entity mimicking (an intelligent) eccentric. You don’t have to agree that the tradeoff is worthwhile, but please claim that about the tradeoff I’m proposing, not some bizarre one where we go recruiting anyone who has sufficiently heterodox ideas.
b) I am not necessarily suggesting removing the karma system. I’m suggesting toning it down, which could easily be accompanied by other measures to help users find the content they’d most like to see. There’s plenty of room for experimentation—the forum seems to have been stuck in a local maximum (at best—perhaps not a maximum) for the last few years, and CEA should have the resources for some A/B testing of new ideas.
c) Plenty of pre-Reddit internet forums have been successful in pursuing their goal with no karma system at all, let alone a weighted one. Looking at the current posts on the front page of the EA Reddit, only one is critical of EA, and that’s the same Bostrom discussion that’s been going on here. So I don’t see good empirical evidence that toning down the karma system would create the kind of wild west you fear.
If only there were some kind of measure of an individuals contribution. Maybe we could call it something like PELTIV
Why do people think vote weight should keep on increasing after a certain amount of karma? I’m curious!
This is a mechanism for maintaining cultural continuity.
Karma represents how much the community trusts you, and in return, because you are trusted, you’re granted greater ability to influence what others see because your judgement has been vetted over a long series of posts. The increase in voting power is roughly logarithmic with karma, so the increased influence in practice hits diminishing returns pretty quickly.
If we take this away it allows the culture of the site to drift more quickly, say because there’s a large influx of new folks. Right now existing members can curate what happens on the Forum. If we take away the current voting structure, we’re at greater risk of this site becoming less the site the existing user base wants.
I don’t speak for the Forum by any means, but as I see it we’re trying to create a space here to talk about certain things in a certain way, and that means we want new people to learn the norms and be part of what exists first before they try to change it, since outsiders often fail to understand why things work the way they do until they’ve gotten enough experience to see how the existing mechnismism make things work. Once you understand how things work, it becomes possible to try to change things in ways that keeps what works and changes what doesn’t. The voting mechanism is downstream of this and is an important tool of the membership to curate the site.
That said, you can also just ignore the votes if you don’t agree with them and read whatever you want.
I really don’t think the libertarian “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else” works here as the EA forum is pretty much the place where EA discussions are held. Sure, they happen on twitter and reddit too but you have to admit it’s not the same. Most discussions start here and are then picked up there.
I agree with your other arguments, I don’t want the culture of the site to drift too quickly because of a large influx of new folks. But why wouldn’t a cut off be sufficient for that? I don’t see why the power has to keep on increasing after, say, a 200 karma. Because at that point value lock-in might become an issue. Reminds me a bit of the average age of US senators being 64 years old. Not too dismiss the wisdom of experienced people, but insights from new folks is important too.
This doesn’t seem self-evidently bad or obviously likely.
Sure, not everyone likes curated gardens. If that’s not the kind of site you want, there’s other places. Reddit, for example, has active communities that operate under different norms.
The folks who started the Forum prefer the sort of structure it has. If you want something else and you don’t have a convincing argument that convinces us, you’re free to participate in discussions elsewhere.
As to deeper reasons why the Forum is the way it is, see, for example, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism
‘There are other places’ seems like a terrible benchmark to judge by. Reddit is basically the only other active forum on the internet for EA discussion and nowhere else has any chance of materially affecting EA culture. The existence of this place suppresses alternatives—I used to run a utilitarianism forum that basically folded into this because it didn’t seem sensible at the time to compete with people we almost totally agreed with.
Posting a a single unevidenced LW argument as though it were scripture as an argument against being exposed to a wider range of opinions seems like a poor epistemic practice. In any case, that thread is about banning, which I’ve become more sympathetic to, and which is totally unrelated to the karma system.