I like the suggestions, and they probably-not-so-incidentally are also things that I often tell myself I should do more and that I hate. One drawback with them is that they are already quite difficult, so I’m worried that it’s too ambitious of an ask for many. At least for an individual, it might be more tractable to (encourage them to) change their excessive use of qualifiers as a first baby step than to jump right into quantification and betting. (Of course, what people find more or less difficult confidence-wise differs. But these things are definitely quite high on my personal “how scary are things” ranking, and I would expect that that’s the case for most people.)
OTOH, on the community level, the approach to encourage more quantification etc. might well be more tractable. Community wide communication norms are very fuzzy and seem hard to influence on the whole. (I noticed that I didn’t draw the distinction quite where you drew it. E.g. “Acknowledgements that arguments changed your mind” are also about communication norms.)
I am a little bit worried that it might have backfire effects. More quantification and betting could mostly encourage already confident people to do so (while underconfident people are still stuck at “wouldn’t even dare to write a forum comment because that’s scary.”), make the online community seem more confident, and make entry for underconfident people harder, i.e scarier. Overall, I think the reasons to encourage a culture of betting, quantification etc. are stronger than the concerns about backfiring. But I’m not sure if that’s the case for other norms that could have that effect. (See also my reply to Emery )
I agree that the mechanisms proposed in my comment are quite costly sometimes. But I think higher-effort downstream activities only need to be invoked occasionally (e.g. not everyone who downvotes needs to explain why but it’s good that someone will occasionally) — if they are invoked consistently they will be picked up by people.
Right, I think I see how this can backfire now. Maybe upvoting “ugh, I still think that this is likely but am uncomfortable about betting” might still encourage using qualifiers for reasons 1–3 while acknowledging vulnerability and reducing pressure on commenters?
Reply 2⁄3
I like the suggestions, and they probably-not-so-incidentally are also things that I often tell myself I should do more and that I hate. One drawback with them is that they are already quite difficult, so I’m worried that it’s too ambitious of an ask for many. At least for an individual, it might be more tractable to (encourage them to) change their excessive use of qualifiers as a first baby step than to jump right into quantification and betting. (Of course, what people find more or less difficult confidence-wise differs. But these things are definitely quite high on my personal “how scary are things” ranking, and I would expect that that’s the case for most people.) OTOH, on the community level, the approach to encourage more quantification etc. might well be more tractable. Community wide communication norms are very fuzzy and seem hard to influence on the whole. (I noticed that I didn’t draw the distinction quite where you drew it. E.g. “Acknowledgements that arguments changed your mind” are also about communication norms.) I am a little bit worried that it might have backfire effects. More quantification and betting could mostly encourage already confident people to do so (while underconfident people are still stuck at “wouldn’t even dare to write a forum comment because that’s scary.”), make the online community seem more confident, and make entry for underconfident people harder, i.e scarier. Overall, I think the reasons to encourage a culture of betting, quantification etc. are stronger than the concerns about backfiring. But I’m not sure if that’s the case for other norms that could have that effect. (See also my reply to Emery )
I agree that the mechanisms proposed in my comment are quite costly sometimes. But I think higher-effort downstream activities only need to be invoked occasionally (e.g. not everyone who downvotes needs to explain why but it’s good that someone will occasionally) — if they are invoked consistently they will be picked up by people.
Right, I think I see how this can backfire now. Maybe upvoting “ugh, I still think that this is likely but am uncomfortable about betting” might still encourage using qualifiers for reasons 1–3 while acknowledging vulnerability and reducing pressure on commenters?