So I've got to ask... do my posts not get voted up as much as the other regular posters' because an upvote doesn't seem to signal much, or because people actually don't like my posts that much? Vote up if the former explanation, down if the latter.
I've often used voting to encourage posters that I like. Since I know that
Eliezer has a long history of blogging, I don't see him as needing the same
level of encouragement that new posters might need, so I'm not always so quick
to upvote his posts even when I think it is deserved.
7Scott Alexander14y
I often catch myself using "other Eliezer posts" as the reference class for an
Eliezer post, versus "posts in general" as the reference class for everyone
else's posts. That holds you to a much higher standard, especially since I best
remember your early Overcoming Bias posts where you were picking off low-hanging
fruit. It's unfair to you and I'm trying to stop it. Anti-kibbitzer doesn't work
here because I go to new posts from the Recent Posts sidebar, plus your writing
style's hard to miss.
I guess that counts as an upvote.
3Eliezer Yudkowsky14y
That's generally fine, since I still get information out of which of my posts
are being upvoted versus downvoted. I just have to know whether I should
consider that signal commensurate with the signals other posts are getting
(because if so that implies I should hurry up and finish this arc, then write
less). But it sounds like the answer is no, on the whole.
6AlexU14y
The latter.
Write shorter posts. Write in a simpler and less oracular prose style. And write
more substantive posts -- at times, it seems as if you believe your every
passing thought deserves 2,000 words. I'll often read your posts and, while
recognizing some germ of a worthwhile idea there, regret the time and effort it
took to locate it.
6PhilGoetz14y
My impression is that your posts get voted up as much as anybody's. Just look at
the Karma score list. Look at the "Recent Posts": 3, 4, 2, 22, 3, 5, 7, 18, 0,
25. You have the 22.
You might keep in mind the "Do I want my time back?" criterion that someone
posted recently. Your posts are very long. Shorter posts will get more up-votes
from people using that criterion.
Also, although I fear you will abuse this viewpoint, I think that everyone has
their own "IQ window", and they will down-vote posts that are either below or
above their window.
6SoullessAutomaton14y
To anyone who agrees with an upvote not signalling much: Please reconsider to
what extent the value of upvoting is to communicate to the author vs. to other
readers. One would assume that, eventually, we'd like LW to have a healthy
population of people who haven't necessarily read OB for years and may not be
familiar with Eliezer's previous work, so won't realize the higher standard
being applied.
Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that Eliezer is capable of reading the comments and
comparing scores between articles, so holding him to a higher relative standard
isn't actually providing substantial additional feedback to him. Based on this,
it seems to me that rating Eliezer differently than you would other authors is
strictly suboptimal.
3Paul Crowley14y
I can imagine an argument that holding him to a higher standard does provide
more information, because he gets more information the closer to the probability
of an upvote is to 50%. However, in practice I suspect this is an argument in
favour of more upvotes, and in truth I'd be surprised if there isn't a name for
the cognitive bias about judging a thing against a narrower category even when
you're asked to judge it against a wider one.
4anonym14y
Your idea about getting closer to 50% probability of an upvote in order to get
more information identifies a weakness in the voting system. It doesn't matter
as much for comments, but I think it is inadequate for articles.
Much better than having to put every article into one of three categories -- up,
down, or neither -- would be to have a slider that starts at 0 and can take
values between -100 and +100. What we have now is equivalent to something like
having -100 to -33.3 all mapped to 'down', -33.3 to +33.3 all mapped to neither,
and +33.3 to +100 all mapped to 'up'. Obviously, lots of information is being
discarded by design.
Another problem is that votes aren't normalized with respect to the user that
cast the vote. An up vote from a user who rarely votes up should be worth more
than one from someone who votes everything up.
Also, there could be distorting effects due to different subsets of readers
preferentially reading different subsets of articles. If readers coming to LW
without having read OB tend to vote differently (which is plausible since OB
folks have not voted for years and may think of not voting up or down as the
default, with a vote being for special emphasis), and they tend to read
different sorts of articles (simpler articles on easier topics), the articles
they read will appear to be wildly more popular.
3Eliezer Yudkowsky14y
The slider is an interesting notion. It adds user-interface complexity, and may
have incentive problems for users who desire to exert control, but potentially
garners a substantially more useful form of information.
3Paul Crowley14y
At the moment the current score is a strong influence on how I vote on comments:
I vote to move the score to the value I'd like it to have. This is somewhat
unstable; directly specifying a personal score and taking a median would be less
problematic.
2[anonymous]14y
The problem of the desire to exert control makes me think that a better option
is giving a limited number of double/super/special votes that users can ration
out as they see fit. Extra votes that actually mean something.
0anonym14y
That's a good idea. Though I didn't say it originally, when I mentioned
normalization of a vote with respect to the user that cast it, I meant not only
that it should be normalized against the average rating of a vote for that user
but also against how much the user votes in general -- users who rate everything
would then have less influence per vote than users who vote less frequently. If
that were the case, then people who prefer to ration their votes and use them
only for things they feel very strongly about (or have thought carefully about)
would not have much less influence on what is popular and the direction of the
site, as they currently do.
2PhilGoetz14y
Having a slider requires a more-sophisticated data analysis, because different
people use different rating scales. Typically psychologists use a multi-point
scale, then use Rasch analysis (also called multi-item response theory) on the
data.
I would say from my experience that a 5-point scale is not big enough; almost
everything gets 3 or 4 points, except from the people (about 2% of raters) who
binarize the scale by giving everything either a 1 or a 5. Also, people will not
use negative ratings, so don't try to center them on zero. People (or at least
Americans) just can't say "zero is average".
3anonym14y
My instinct would be to have the numbers not be visible to the user. You just
have a rectangle with two colors, initially red on the right side and green on
the left side. Clicking anywhere inside the rectangle changes the dividing line
to be at that location. So clicking 90% of the way towards the right would make
the left 90% be green and the right 10% be red. The backend would know that it
corresponds to whatever number it corresponds to (+80 according to the scheme I
gave earlier), but the user just has a qualitative feel for how much of the mass
they've allocated to the good (green) color and how much to the bad (red) color.
0Paul Crowley14y
Two things you could do about that:
* As you hover over the rating button, the text below changes to indicate what
that rating would mean. Zero stars means "don't bother", one star means "good
enough to stay visible", two stars means "above-average" and so on
* Allow half stars for more information.
We would use percentile score to make the best use of the votes of binarizing
voters without giving them more influence than high-information voters.
0JulianMorrison14y
Amazon ranks stuff between ★☆☆☆☆ and ★★★★★ with a simple Javascript mouse hover
/ mouse click to set the value. LW could copy that pretty easily. I suggest that
5 categories would be enough.
2Paul Crowley14y
See PhilGoetz's point below: "almost everything gets 3 or 4 points".
3SoullessAutomaton14y
Well, let's look.
The top scoring articles seem to rated in the 50-60 range, indicating at least
60 users who have voted. Eliezer's articles seem to tend to be rated around
10-20, so that's probably closer to a 30% chance of upvoting. As far as I could
tell none of the top three rated posts are by Eliezer. Yvain seems to be the
most consistently highly rated poster overall, with typical scores seemingly
ranging from 20-40. Since Yvain roughly mimics Eliezer's writing style and
content, we could probably expect an unbiased rating of Eliezer's posts to be
similar. All around, as a very rough approximation, we can say that Eliezer's
posts are getting an upvote penalty of 50%.
Take all that as you will.
I'd imagine there is a name. Whatever it is, I consistently fall prey to it with
most intuitive self-evaluations (comparing myself mostly to groups of which I am
not a representative member).
2anonym14y
One thing you don't mention is that Yvain's posts and writing style are simpler
and easier to comprehend than Eliezer's. Yvain has also presented some posts on
fairly basic topics that are probably familiar to most longtime OB readers but
are new to readers just joining LW. [EDIT: I retract the last point. I was
thinking of the 'priming' post and that there were others like this on basic
heuristics and biases topics, but that seems like the only one.]
That is not to say that there's not also some bias. I think many of us probably
consciously or unconsciously hold Eliezer to much higher standards than anybody
else.
All the recent talk about cults and cult-like behavior has probably made some
people more hesitant to vote up anything by Eliezer as well.
2SoullessAutomaton14y
Not to be contrary, but I actually find Eliezer's posts easier to comprehend,
partly due to better structure and pacing, partly due to a typical slightly
higher informational content holding my attention better. I suspect this is
mostly a function of Eliezer having more practice, and of my own short attention
span, heh.
I was going to say that I expect the cultishness discussion to be more directly
relevant to the upvoting penalty, but looking quickly at post scores doesn't
seem to support that theory.
2[anonymous]14y
It sounds like a form of availability bias, but I agree it needs a more precise
term.
6whpearson14y
I choose option C, I don't think your current posts are as important worth
discussing as much as some other current posts.
The sequence on getting people to work together is only interesting if you are
trying to form a specific type of fractious group. A group that cares about the
world in 20-30 years will be very fractious because predicting the future is
hard and has no particular methodology (and most people get it wrong) so most
people will have different ideas of the future and hence different strategies
for what should be done now.
Edit: You seem to be in a filler arc at the moment where as other people are
starting their main sequences, to put it in anime terms.
4Paul Crowley14y
I like the current season, as it were :-) - I'm very interested in group
organising stuff and I think it's important. I'm looking forward to the next
season from the newer contributors - it often takes a season to find your
stride...
2thomblake14y
I like your 'anime terms' explanation - I also pick option 'C', along with a bit
of agreeing with Yvain.
4CarlShulman14y
I think you'd get higher ratings for more substantive posts, things in the vein
of the posts on quantum physics, zombies, pebblesorters, etc.
Also, I consciously try to correct for bias in your favor, and I suspect others
do the same (your posts are recognizable, even with Yvain imitating your style).
2anonym14y
I think you'd get higher ratings for more substantive posts, things in the vein
of the posts on quantum physics, zombies, pebblesorters, etc.
That should apply to everybody, not just Eliezer. I think you're comparing
Eliezer's LW writings to his most substantive OB writings, but that's not a
standard that is applied to anybody else. LW is intentionally more casual and
more tolerant of shorter, less substantive posts.
1CarlShulman14y
The cited text was a general prediction.
1anonym14y
My point was not very clear. I realize you made a general prediction. What I
mean is that if you made the prediction as a way of explaining the discrepancy,
then it doesn't explain it, because Eliezer's posts are no less substantive than
other posts with higher ratings, and if more substantive posts raised the scores
of his posts, it would raise the scores of other posts too, and the disparity
would remain -- unless different standards are being applied to Eliezer than to
others (such as other posts being rated relative to all LW posts as a whole, and
Eliezer's posts being rated relative to his OB posts as a whole).
2Jonathan_Graehl14y
Reading the RSS feed, it's a significant extra step to vote. I'm more inclined
to do that for new authors than those I already think highly of.
I also assumed that, as admin, your posts were automatically promoted. But maybe
that's something you only sometimes elect.
Since you're using the data to judge reactions to your work, I hereby promise
not to employ any (counter)-biasing strategy in praising you.
2Eliezer Yudkowsky14y
Again, that's fine! You don't need to change anything! I just need to know
whether LW is telling me to shut up or not. The relative data on which posts of
mine people like more is still good.
2Roko14y
I think I hold you to a higher standard than others too.
1[anonymous]14y
A little of both I suspect. You had a bit of a quiet time there where you
weren't posting many 'important' posts while (for example) Yvain was letting out
years of repressed blogging brilliance.
0Larks14y
I definitely do the former, because I presumed that everyone knew you were God ±
10%, so I ought to vote to give you information on the utility of different
styles, topics, and the like. If your karma vis-a-vis other posters is also
significant, I suppose I'll try to upvote you more than I do now, but still less
than I do for others; otherwise I'd end up upvoting practically everything you
write.
Curious about Eliezer's claim that his posts were voted up less than others, I did some statistical analysis on the scores of Less Wrong posts. I took the list of all posts as of midnight Mar 28, excluding posts with negative scores (which weren't available to me), the ten most recent posts (which people haven't had a chance to vote on yet), and the twenty oldest posts (from when the site was brand-new, and people weren't around to vote or hadn't established their criteria for voting), for a total of 93 articles. Of these, 20 consist primarily of a link and quotation, or are otherwise very short. Short articles received much fewer upvotes than full-length articles.
All articles (93): Mean 17.0, Median 14
Short articles (20): Mean 6.9, Median 5
Full length articles (73): Mean 19.8, Median 18
Articles by Eliezer Yudkowsky (21): Mean 17.4, Median 18
Short articles by Eliezer Yudkowsky (5): Mean 3.8, Median 2
Full-length articles by Eliezer Yudkowsky (16): Mean 21.7, Median 20
No short articles by Yvain
Full-length articles by Yvain (18): Mean 28.9, Median 25
Full-length articles by all other authors (39): Mean 14.7, Median 12
Just a general hint: if you go to http://lesswrong.com/message/inbox/ , you can see all comments that have been posted in response to your comments. Discovered it by accident, but it really does make using LW easier.
My colleague, let’s call her Sally, tells me she is a psychic medium. She tells me she first spoke to a dead person when she was three: she was talking to a woman on the stairs, and her mother was concerned when she went to tell her mother about it. Now, she tends not to see people, she realises they are not physically present in the way that a living person is present, but she senses them.
She reports three ways in which the Dead communicate. Normally, it is as if she hears them speaking, and relays the message to the living. During her... (read more)
It might be worth a post, if you can relate it to rationality in general, and
make an interesting point or two. You have the karma for it.
4Eliezer Yudkowsky14y
I wouldn't suggest it. This seems like the sort of thing generally handled
better at a skeptic's forum. From LW's perspective this is pretty basic
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/excluding-the-s.html].
Somebody is talking to me about either advanced physics or magic, and I can't tell which one.
He mentions electron tunneling, superstring theory and quantum mechanics, in explaining why positive thoughts attract positive things, he mentioned a book called The Physics Of Consciousness, something about a quantum level of the brain.
I know there's benefit to thinking positive, but isnt that explained by evolution? I didn't think that quantum mechanics or a universal attraction of things to other things was involved.
The underlying assertion of most of these goofy new-age claims is that consciousness is a quantum process. Of course, in a trivial sense it is quantum insofar that every process in the physical world seems to obey quantum mechanics. The exact claim is that something "essentially quantum" is behind the phenomenon of consciousness, that the computations of the brain actually exploit uninuitive quantum behaviours that cannot be explained by a classical physics picture -- the claim is that we're quantum computers.
You build a quantum computer by exploiting the fact that a simple, perfectly isolated physical entity does not act like a tiny billiard, but rather as a complex-valued wave that isn't in any particular place at a given time, it's spread out. We say that small systems can be in "superpositions" of multiple states. Now when the system interacts with the environment, by hitting a photon from our lasers, say, it will "collapse" into one state, we will see the photon bouncing off as though the particle had been at one particular place. (Parenthetically, It should be noted that "collapse" is not a real a-priori physical process, but only... (read more)
Levskaya, if this first comment is anything like your usual standard, please
post more!
2Za3k13y
Although I am no expert, I think your quantum computing comments are incorrect.
To explore branches, retaining all histories, you need a "nondeterministic"
computer that branches freely. This gives an exponential (2^n) speedup over a
classical computer. Quantum computers apparently give only a polynomial one. For
more detail, check out Scott Aaronson's blog "Schtetl-Optimized":
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/ [http://scottaaronson.com/blog/]
1Liron14y
Wow, this comment is incredible. Thanks for solidifying my previously vague
understanding.
8Emile14y
Quick heuristic : if someone is trying to relate quantum physics to a topic
outside of physics, it's probably (99% ?) bullshit.
(Eliezer's series on QM would fall in the remaining 1%)
So unless you have other independent reasons to believe he isn't full of it,
it's probably not worth investigating.
6Eliezer Yudkowsky14y
Magic.
5MBlume14y
Your friend is suffering from a confusion of levels. Electron tunneling occurs
on a vastly different level of organization than do positive thoughts. Anyone
speaking of the two in the same sentence should at least set off warning bells.
ETA: I think I can state that a bit more clearly. Positive thoughts are
invisible to a tunneling electron in the same way that New York is invisible to
an ant in Central Park. The pattern of the whole is simply not accessible from
that lower level.
ETA2: It is sensible to say "the sky is blue because dipole radiation is
frequency dependent," despite the fact that "blue sky" occurs at a larger scale
than "dipole radiation". However, this is because the contributions from the
lower level add in a simple way: a blue sky is built from a mole of deflected
blue photons. A happy thought is not composed of a mole of "happy" electrons.
4sketerpot14y
I took a brief look at that book. The author seems to be saying "There just has
to be quantum magic in the brain somewhere", and then he goes looking for places
he could plausibly imagine some. He's trying to justify what he wants to
believe.
An excellent plan. Is there perhaps a way we can sticky this thread, or
otherwise keep it linked from the front page as the month goes on?
7CarlShulman14y
I was applying a standard anti-bias heuristic I have internalized: when the
costs are low and a beneficial action clear, be the person who ignores the
bystander effect [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect].
You can always drag it onto the top bar of your web browser for a direct link. I
recommend that for your inbox [http://lesswrong.com/message/inbox] (showing
private messages and replies to your posts/comments) as well.
1Paul Crowley14y
Is there a reason you put it that way, rather than "be the person who ignores
the bystander effect, especially when the costs are low and/or a beneficial
action is clear"? Obviously one doesn't want to start to act like an
underpowered superhero, but it sounds like there's more to your thinking than
that.
1CarlShulman14y
I prefer to use more detailed analysis and consultation rather than a
precomputed rough-and-ready heuristic like that in high-cost and uncertain
situations, since the expected value of deliberation increases.
Seriously? Why? To encourage the Facebook masses to come here?
* shudders *
2timtyler14y
For reasons associated with signalling affiliations - the same as with most such
groups.
1pre14y
Oh, so like a badge to put on your profile page.
I did wonder why people joined so many pointless groups.
I think it would likely bring more facebook randoms here. Not really sure what
the aims of the place are in that regard. Presumably we DO want to encourage
rationality outside our own little clique, so bringing more people here would be
good. But presumably we also don't want to drown in trolls and noise and idiots
and spam which is what tends to be the final result of that kinda recruitment
drive.
Probably should figure out what the plan is for that before you start,
effectively, advertising on facebook I reckon.
1timtyler14y
The OB group has 231 members. There will be a LW group - but who will make it?
1timtyler14y
It's arrived. To quote from its "wall":
"Wow, I am so happy that there is a Facebook group!"
* http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144017955332
[http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144017955332]
I don't think so, it's probably best to keep most of the community focused on
the posts. With forums the attention would be divided.
An occasional open thread is a good way to fit in the lower-threshold stuff, and
that's common to many blogs.
4SoullessAutomaton14y
Forums are also more prone to accreting semi-off-topic crud. Do we really want
to deal with "ITT: post your rationalism-themed cat macros"?
So I've got to ask... do my posts not get voted up as much as the other regular posters' because an upvote doesn't seem to signal much, or because people actually don't like my posts that much? Vote up if the former explanation, down if the latter.
Curious about Eliezer's claim that his posts were voted up less than others, I did some statistical analysis on the scores of Less Wrong posts. I took the list of all posts as of midnight Mar 28, excluding posts with negative scores (which weren't available to me), the ten most recent posts (which people haven't had a chance to vote on yet), and the twenty oldest posts (from when the site was brand-new, and people weren't around to vote or hadn't established their criteria for voting), for a total of 93 articles. Of these, 20 consist primarily of a link and quotation, or are otherwise very short. Short articles received much fewer upvotes than full-length articles.
The spreadsheet I used is at http://www.jimrandomh.org/misc/LWPosts.xls
Just a general hint: if you go to http://lesswrong.com/message/inbox/ , you can see all comments that have been posted in response to your comments. Discovered it by accident, but it really does make using LW easier.
A psychic medium.
My colleague, let’s call her Sally, tells me she is a psychic medium. She tells me she first spoke to a dead person when she was three: she was talking to a woman on the stairs, and her mother was concerned when she went to tell her mother about it. Now, she tends not to see people, she realises they are not physically present in the way that a living person is present, but she senses them.
She reports three ways in which the Dead communicate. Normally, it is as if she hears them speaking, and relays the message to the living. During her... (read more)
Requesting rationalist assistance:
Somebody is talking to me about either advanced physics or magic, and I can't tell which one.
He mentions electron tunneling, superstring theory and quantum mechanics, in explaining why positive thoughts attract positive things, he mentioned a book called The Physics Of Consciousness, something about a quantum level of the brain.
I know there's benefit to thinking positive, but isnt that explained by evolution? I didn't think that quantum mechanics or a universal attraction of things to other things was involved.
The underlying assertion of most of these goofy new-age claims is that consciousness is a quantum process. Of course, in a trivial sense it is quantum insofar that every process in the physical world seems to obey quantum mechanics. The exact claim is that something "essentially quantum" is behind the phenomenon of consciousness, that the computations of the brain actually exploit uninuitive quantum behaviours that cannot be explained by a classical physics picture -- the claim is that we're quantum computers.
You build a quantum computer by exploiting the fact that a simple, perfectly isolated physical entity does not act like a tiny billiard, but rather as a complex-valued wave that isn't in any particular place at a given time, it's spread out. We say that small systems can be in "superpositions" of multiple states. Now when the system interacts with the environment, by hitting a photon from our lasers, say, it will "collapse" into one state, we will see the photon bouncing off as though the particle had been at one particular place. (Parenthetically, It should be noted that "collapse" is not a real a-priori physical process, but only... (read more)
Quick Poll: How many rationalists meditate? It seems like the mental discipline involved could be highly useful.
For those who do: what sort of training did you use? Did you teach yourself, or find a teacher? What benefits do you perceive from the practice?
John H. Conway is giving a series of lectures on the "Free Will Theorem" of Conway and Kochen: videos available here.
This is in response to Yvain's comment requesting an Open Thread.
Why didn't this post show up in the RSS feed?
I just happened to see someone comment about it on another post...
In Google Reader I searched the history to make sure I hadn't missed it, but it appears it never showed up.
Could someoone make a "Less Wrong" Facebook group, please?
This is a kludge. We need proper forums.