My experience here has been that animal welfare forum people donāt receive criticism quite as well as GHW people or AI safety people. In many cases a comment which pushes against a pro animal welfare argument will take a bit of a hit. This isnāt always the caseāsome comments do get well received.
When i make reasonable criticisms/ācomments on animal welfare posts, i often get karma downvoted more heavily than i think (at least) makes sense.
This could of course just be due to poor quality comments and my poor judgement, but my data point against this is that i have found the opposite to be the case in GHW and AI safety discussions, where people seem less prone to karma downvote me even when they disagree.
Edit: As a side note thanks to @mal_grahamšø for great engagement on my comments on their post after I wrote this. Not sure if they karma knocked me or not though ;) :D.
Given your expertise is in global health, I do think itās likely that youāre less well-calibrated on how reasonable your animal welfare comments are relative to your global health ones! So you may think itās a reasonable critique but someone who is a die-hard animal person may have already thought about your comment and know there is a common counterpoint that negates it (which you havenāt heard yet). Obviously, the inverse could be true for global health comments.
But I agree that this shouldnāt have been downvoted on karma grounds!
(Also, sometimes your comments do give me āI am sceptical of most things animal welfareā vibes, so people might be reacting to a real or perceived difference in values about how much animals matter).
āAlso, sometimes your comments do give me āI am sceptical of most things animal welfareā vibes, so people might be reacting to a real or perceived difference in values about how much animals matter).ā
i think this seems part of my point/āthe problem. i probably do have a difference in values? (maybe) about how much animals matter, but I would still be in the top 1 ā5 percent of humans on the ācaring about animalsā front. If Iām giving you āskeptical of most things animal welfare vibesā then i think it might help to recalibrate to appreciate perspectives outside of an animal welfare bubble at it were.
Someone commenting at all in an animal welfare thread on the EA forum means they are likely to be extremely high on the ācares about animalsā axis, unless they are trolling or downright abusive. Even someone who seems highly sceptical about animal welfare by your lights.
But even someone who doesnāt think animals matter at all should be able to make reasonable-ish comments without necessarily getting karma downvoted. The less echo chamber the better.
haha I can confirm I did not karma knock you and I was kind of surprised you had gotten so downvoted! I actually upvoted when I saw that to counteract.
One random thought Iāll add is that since you are most experienced (afaict?) in ghd, Iād expect your arguments to be at their best in that context, so you getting upvoted on GHD and downvoted on AW is at least consistent with having more expertise in one than the other, so not necessarily evidence that AW folks are more sensitive. Although Iām not ruling that out!
The other thing Iām not sure I understand is how much weight a single individualās downvote can haveāis there any chance that a few AW people have a ton of karma here, so that just a few people downvoting can take you negative in a way that wouldnāt happen as much in GHD?
Yes my GHW comments are surely better, but i doubt that accounts for much of the issue. getting little attention because of low quality comments is one thing, getting a bunch of active down voting is another.
thanks @mal_grahamšø Iāve been part off a bunch of animal welfare discussions, and it has been a consistent pattern over the last couple of years. And not only for my comments but others tooāif someone pushes back thereās a good chance they will get knocked even if they make a fair point. Iām a bit more belligerent than most, to but i think the consequence is that animal welfare discussions become more echo chambery than the average on the forum because it can be pretty discouraging to have a contrarian view
The karma vote strength hierarchy is explained here. If you go here and sort by karma, you can see who on the forum has the most. The most karma anybody has is in the 25,000 to 50,000 bracket ā and thatās just one person, Linch, with around 27,600. So, Linchās strong karma votes are worth 10 points (or ā10). Most of the ākarma bourgeoisā are in the 8 point and 9 point brackets.[1]
Something I only just learned yesterday is that you hover over the karma on a comment or post (on desktop) or tap it (on mobile), it tells you how many people actually voted!
Although I do see there is an option in settings to hide yourself from the people directory, so I guess itās possible some karma rich people are hiding themselves.
The other thing Iām not sure I understand is how much weight a single individualās downvote can haveāis there any chance that a few AW people have a ton of karma here, so that just a few people downvoting can take you negative in a way that wouldnāt happen as much in GHD?
Itās probably the strong downvote of one single user (especially given that there were only two disagree votes and one of them was mine). If I strongly downvote the same comment, it goes from 0 to ā5 karma! (and I donāt think Iām a gigantic outlier karma monster).
Just wanted to say, as someone from the animal side of things, that if this is indeed the case (no strong opinion either way), Iām sorry this happened to you and I appreciate that youāre pointing this out. Separating agreement from post quality is something I deeply value in the discourse here, and we should police the correct use of voting.
As a (wild) animal welfare person, I am disappointed to see this. Your comment was thoughtful and well-intentioned.
It doesnāt apply here, but in general I expect animal welfare people are more likely to disapprove of certain views, or take more of a combative attitude to public debates, because so much of normal discourse sneaks in speciesist assumptions and is actively harmful to animals. But I donāt think thatās the explanation hereāI largely agree with your comment.
To respond to your original comment, I think with a bit of creativity you will be able to find politically tractable interventions. For example, people tend to view humane management of animals in cities quite positively. Thereās also a growing movement for compassionate conservation. Itās more focused on doing no harm than actively helping wild animals, but at least it is a movement towards thinking about the welfare of wild animals. I do think that there will often be a tradeoff between effectiveness and political tractability though, and it may be worth pursuing sub-optimal interventions for a while in order to gain greater political momentum towards helping wild animals.
I have no idea how much this kind of voting behaviour varies from discussions about one cause area to another, but I can confirm that this happens a lot in various discussions on multiple different topics. People seem keen to karma downvote/āstrongly downvote posts or comments they disagree with, regardless of quality. I surmise this is probably just people being mad and having a knee-jerk reaction, in a lot of cases.
I recently had an experience where someone was using a technical term incorrectly, and I left two comments trying to correct the use of this term. These comments didnāt get responded to, but they did get strongly downvoted. It was enough that it triggered me getting rate limited from commenting on the forum! This just seems like a case where someone felt spiteful that I pointed out they made a mistake.
Thatās one example, but people do this all the time. Another recent example is here, where I didnāt notice or complain about the downvoting, but someone else noticed it and complained about it on my behalf.
People in this community are only human, and weāre affected by the same impulses as anybody else. We have the same cognitive/āpsychological biases as anyone else and the same problems with emotional self-regulation as anyone else. It takes a certain amount of discipline for me to remain judicious about my downvotes (or, on rare occasions, quickly undo a downvote I made in a moment of irritation).
To the extent itās a real problem, itās a problem where itās not a one-off spar between two people (or a few), but where itās systemic around certain ideas or topics. I get the impression people sort of knee-jerk/āundiscerningly upvote posts and comments that support the narrative that near-term AGI is likely, and downvote posts and comments that challenge this narrative, even when the actual content is narrow in scope, e.g. pointing out a mistake in something that promotes a near-term AGI narrative.
If you want to express mainstream North American liberal/āprogressive views on social justice-related topics, forget about it. The downvotes will fall like a cloud of daggers. (The Overton window of the EA Forum is a bit skewed in that regard ā and itās extremely skewed for the LessWrong users who come over here ā where some people will defend views they concede are or might be offensive and wrong, such as scientific racism or white nationalism, on the grounds of free speech or neutrality or intellectual freedom or whatever, but do not extend the same defense to the sort of bog standard social justice views that mainstream liberal or progressive politicians or academics generally affirm. I think Kamala Harris or Barack Obama might get downvoted on the EA Forum talking about systemic racism, sexism, or trans rights in the ways they already do in public appearances, and an authoritarian white nationalist like Curtis Yarvin ā who many people on LessWrong seem to be a fan of ā might get upvoted for some edgy take about Black-on-Black crime or race and IQ or something.)
I find the ways that I see people on the EA Forum circle the wagons around near-term AGI and social justice quite demented ā sorry to be so blunt. Someone can make a post that says we should try to contact aliens to warn them about AGI and that gets +27 karma, but if you point out someone used a term from machine learning incorrectly that gets 0 or negative karma, and if you get into arguments about social justice you will get negative karma about the half the time, seemingly regardless of what you say (at least, I canāt figure out the pattern, if there is one). It just seems like if you are willing to entertain really strange ideas like the aliens thing, you should also be willing to entertain mainstream ideas that many experts endorse ā I mean specifically things that donāt go against EAās core principles and havenāt been discussed to death already, about which there isnāt already a consensus within the community.
I guess it doesnāt surprise me that people might knee-jerk downvote entirely reasonable comments about the limited market potential for humane insecticides or things of that nature, since thatās similar. Maybe itās an example of in-group polarization, where people want to fiercely defend an opinion thatās extreme relative to the general population or out-group.
I also thought your comment didnāt deserve to get downvoted :ā(, even though I disagreed and thought it partly missed my point (I ofc didnāt downvote it, tho). Even the number of upvotes of Malās comment responding to yours feels a bit violent, actually. I think people should maybe hold off from upvoting when itās not necessary. They can just agree-vote.
I think Malās, Jamesā, and Tristanās potential explanations for why this happened are pretty plausible.
But, also, as I suggest in response to Mal, itās probably just one single person, so :shrug:, I guess. :)
My experience here has been that animal welfare forum people donāt receive criticism quite as well as GHW people or AI safety people. In many cases a comment which pushes against a pro animal welfare argument will take a bit of a hit. This isnāt always the caseāsome comments do get well received.
When i make reasonable criticisms/ācomments on animal welfare posts, i often get karma downvoted more heavily than i think (at least) makes sense.
This could of course just be due to poor quality comments and my poor judgement, but my data point against this is that i have found the opposite to be the case in GHW and AI safety discussions, where people seem less prone to karma downvote me even when they disagree.
Edit: As a side note thanks to @mal_grahamšø for great engagement on my comments on their post after I wrote this. Not sure if they karma knocked me or not though ;) :D.
Given your expertise is in global health, I do think itās likely that youāre less well-calibrated on how reasonable your animal welfare comments are relative to your global health ones! So you may think itās a reasonable critique but someone who is a die-hard animal person may have already thought about your comment and know there is a common counterpoint that negates it (which you havenāt heard yet). Obviously, the inverse could be true for global health comments.
But I agree that this shouldnāt have been downvoted on karma grounds!
(Also, sometimes your comments do give me āI am sceptical of most things animal welfareā vibes, so people might be reacting to a real or perceived difference in values about how much animals matter).
āAlso, sometimes your comments do give me āI am sceptical of most things animal welfareā vibes, so people might be reacting to a real or perceived difference in values about how much animals matter).ā
i think this seems part of my point/āthe problem. i probably do have a difference in values? (maybe) about how much animals matter, but I would still be in the top 1 ā5 percent of humans on the ācaring about animalsā front. If Iām giving you āskeptical of most things animal welfare vibesā then i think it might help to recalibrate to appreciate perspectives outside of an animal welfare bubble at it were.
Someone commenting at all in an animal welfare thread on the EA forum means they are likely to be extremely high on the ācares about animalsā axis, unless they are trolling or downright abusive. Even someone who seems highly sceptical about animal welfare by your lights.
But even someone who doesnāt think animals matter at all should be able to make reasonable-ish comments without necessarily getting karma downvoted. The less echo chamber the better.
haha I can confirm I did not karma knock you and I was kind of surprised you had gotten so downvoted! I actually upvoted when I saw that to counteract.
One random thought Iāll add is that since you are most experienced (afaict?) in ghd, Iād expect your arguments to be at their best in that context, so you getting upvoted on GHD and downvoted on AW is at least consistent with having more expertise in one than the other, so not necessarily evidence that AW folks are more sensitive. Although Iām not ruling that out!
The other thing Iām not sure I understand is how much weight a single individualās downvote can haveāis there any chance that a few AW people have a ton of karma here, so that just a few people downvoting can take you negative in a way that wouldnāt happen as much in GHD?
Yes my GHW comments are surely better, but i doubt that accounts for much of the issue. getting little attention because of low quality comments is one thing, getting a bunch of active down voting is another.
thanks @mal_grahamšø Iāve been part off a bunch of animal welfare discussions, and it has been a consistent pattern over the last couple of years. And not only for my comments but others tooāif someone pushes back thereās a good chance they will get knocked even if they make a fair point. Iām a bit more belligerent than most, to but i think the consequence is that animal welfare discussions become more echo chambery than the average on the forum because it can be pretty discouraging to have a contrarian view
The karma vote strength hierarchy is explained here. If you go here and sort by karma, you can see who on the forum has the most. The most karma anybody has is in the 25,000 to 50,000 bracket ā and thatās just one person, Linch, with around 27,600. So, Linchās strong karma votes are worth 10 points (or ā10). Most of the ākarma bourgeoisā are in the 8 point and 9 point brackets.[1]
Something I only just learned yesterday is that you hover over the karma on a comment or post (on desktop) or tap it (on mobile), it tells you how many people actually voted!
Although I do see there is an option in settings to hide yourself from the people directory, so I guess itās possible some karma rich people are hiding themselves.
Itās probably the strong downvote of one single user (especially given that there were only two disagree votes and one of them was mine). If I strongly downvote the same comment, it goes from 0 to ā5 karma! (and I donāt think Iām a gigantic outlier karma monster).
Just wanted to say, as someone from the animal side of things, that if this is indeed the case (no strong opinion either way), Iām sorry this happened to you and I appreciate that youāre pointing this out. Separating agreement from post quality is something I deeply value in the discourse here, and we should police the correct use of voting.
As a (wild) animal welfare person, I am disappointed to see this. Your comment was thoughtful and well-intentioned.
It doesnāt apply here, but in general I expect animal welfare people are more likely to disapprove of certain views, or take more of a combative attitude to public debates, because so much of normal discourse sneaks in speciesist assumptions and is actively harmful to animals. But I donāt think thatās the explanation hereāI largely agree with your comment.
To respond to your original comment, I think with a bit of creativity you will be able to find politically tractable interventions. For example, people tend to view humane management of animals in cities quite positively. Thereās also a growing movement for compassionate conservation. Itās more focused on doing no harm than actively helping wild animals, but at least it is a movement towards thinking about the welfare of wild animals. I do think that there will often be a tradeoff between effectiveness and political tractability though, and it may be worth pursuing sub-optimal interventions for a while in order to gain greater political momentum towards helping wild animals.
I have no idea how much this kind of voting behaviour varies from discussions about one cause area to another, but I can confirm that this happens a lot in various discussions on multiple different topics. People seem keen to karma downvote/āstrongly downvote posts or comments they disagree with, regardless of quality. I surmise this is probably just people being mad and having a knee-jerk reaction, in a lot of cases.
I recently had an experience where someone was using a technical term incorrectly, and I left two comments trying to correct the use of this term. These comments didnāt get responded to, but they did get strongly downvoted. It was enough that it triggered me getting rate limited from commenting on the forum! This just seems like a case where someone felt spiteful that I pointed out they made a mistake.
Thatās one example, but people do this all the time. Another recent example is here, where I didnāt notice or complain about the downvoting, but someone else noticed it and complained about it on my behalf.
People in this community are only human, and weāre affected by the same impulses as anybody else. We have the same cognitive/āpsychological biases as anyone else and the same problems with emotional self-regulation as anyone else. It takes a certain amount of discipline for me to remain judicious about my downvotes (or, on rare occasions, quickly undo a downvote I made in a moment of irritation).
To the extent itās a real problem, itās a problem where itās not a one-off spar between two people (or a few), but where itās systemic around certain ideas or topics. I get the impression people sort of knee-jerk/āundiscerningly upvote posts and comments that support the narrative that near-term AGI is likely, and downvote posts and comments that challenge this narrative, even when the actual content is narrow in scope, e.g. pointing out a mistake in something that promotes a near-term AGI narrative.
If you want to express mainstream North American liberal/āprogressive views on social justice-related topics, forget about it. The downvotes will fall like a cloud of daggers. (The Overton window of the EA Forum is a bit skewed in that regard ā and itās extremely skewed for the LessWrong users who come over here ā where some people will defend views they concede are or might be offensive and wrong, such as scientific racism or white nationalism, on the grounds of free speech or neutrality or intellectual freedom or whatever, but do not extend the same defense to the sort of bog standard social justice views that mainstream liberal or progressive politicians or academics generally affirm. I think Kamala Harris or Barack Obama might get downvoted on the EA Forum talking about systemic racism, sexism, or trans rights in the ways they already do in public appearances, and an authoritarian white nationalist like Curtis Yarvin ā who many people on LessWrong seem to be a fan of ā might get upvoted for some edgy take about Black-on-Black crime or race and IQ or something.)
I find the ways that I see people on the EA Forum circle the wagons around near-term AGI and social justice quite demented ā sorry to be so blunt. Someone can make a post that says we should try to contact aliens to warn them about AGI and that gets +27 karma, but if you point out someone used a term from machine learning incorrectly that gets 0 or negative karma, and if you get into arguments about social justice you will get negative karma about the half the time, seemingly regardless of what you say (at least, I canāt figure out the pattern, if there is one). It just seems like if you are willing to entertain really strange ideas like the aliens thing, you should also be willing to entertain mainstream ideas that many experts endorse ā I mean specifically things that donāt go against EAās core principles and havenāt been discussed to death already, about which there isnāt already a consensus within the community.
I guess it doesnāt surprise me that people might knee-jerk downvote entirely reasonable comments about the limited market potential for humane insecticides or things of that nature, since thatās similar. Maybe itās an example of in-group polarization, where people want to fiercely defend an opinion thatās extreme relative to the general population or out-group.
I also thought your comment didnāt deserve to get downvoted :ā(, even though I disagreed and thought it partly missed my point (I ofc didnāt downvote it, tho). Even the number of upvotes of Malās comment responding to yours feels a bit violent, actually. I think people should maybe hold off from upvoting when itās not necessary. They can just agree-vote.
I think Malās, Jamesā, and Tristanās potential explanations for why this happened are pretty plausible.
But, also, as I suggest in response to Mal, itās probably just one single person, so :shrug:, I guess. :)