What's the reason that "agree" and "disagree" are anonymous? I find it frustrating when someone clicks the "disagree" button, and then there's no accompanying post to explain the disagreement. I assume that most (all? almost all?) people on the forum would be happy to own their disagreements here, and that would also be good for transparency, etc. Curious to hear others' thoughts (and worried that I'm being incredibly obtuse).
It is good for people to write a comment explaining their disagreement. But if you de-anonymize agree-voting, the main outcome won't be that people explain their reasoning; it will be that people stop voting. Some people will not feel comfortable attaching their name to a dissenting vote.
I think it's better to make it easy for people to leave cheap anonymous signals. Writing an explanatory comment should be encouraged but not required.
I appreciate you explaining your disagree vote, Michael - thank you. I thought it would be really funny if folks just flooded my comment with disagree votes, with no explanation, LOL.
That said, it seems to me that the value of an anonymous disagree vote is negligible (or perhaps even negative), unless there's an explanation. What do you see as the value of "cheap anonymous signals"?
Here's why I think they're not valuable (and likely counter-productive):
For a lengthy post (i.e., this one) where someone clicks "disagree," I guess it's just with the top-line message? I don't know if that assumption is correct. And even if it is, I don't know why they disagree. Does this add to understanding in some way? Or is there some other value I'm not seeing?
If someone simply wrote "No" as their comment (the practical effect of a disagree vote, I think), is that a useful contribution? I think that would run afoul of the forum's posting guidance in multiple ways. How is an anonymous disagree vote different from that?
There are forum principles around respectful disagreement and general EA principles around transparency. Anonymous disagree votes feel to me like they violate both of those.
What principles do anonymous disagree votes uphold?
At least in some cases it's clear what a disagree-vote means, and it's often a useful signal to know how many people agree or disagree. Especially if there's something I haven't really thought about, and seeing the votes gives a quick vibe check.
For a lengthy post (i.e., this one) where someone clicks "disagree," I guess it's just with the top-line message? I don't know if that assumption is correct.
Yes I share this frustration. I often see agree-votes or disagree-votes that I don't know how to interpret. LessWrong has the ability to (non-anonymously) highlight specific passages and agree-vote or disagree-vote just those passages, which I like.
Hi Bruce! I recently attended a Zoom book talk you gave and I really enjoyed it. :)
My answer to your question:
It can be frustrating when people just click disagree and don't explain why, but I don't know that making agree and disagree votes non-anonymous would make much difference. I assume if people want to explain why they disagree they'll write a comment, and if they don't they won't. If disagree votes were non-anonymous, would it result in more people writing comments explaining why they disagree? Well, why would it?
In my view, agree and disagree votes and karma upvotes and downvotes are not all that meaningful, anyway. I find them be a hard-to-ignore distraction from meaningful engagement with people through words, rather than votes. If you create a points system, everybody wants to go for a high score, but that's not the point of a forum.
Overall I would generally just caution people from investing much time or emotional energy in the EA Forum. It's a perfectly fine place to post announcements for organizations like the Good Food Institute and answer questions. In terms of actual deep, meaningful discussion, it's better to seek out — or even create — alternatives. The culture here is sour and trollish. Rather than enforcing norms of civility, the moderators encourage and even engage in the bad behaviour themselves. The only hope I can see of this changing would be if the Centre for Effective Altruism were to choose new people to run the forum who were committed to changing the culture. But what are the odds of that happening?
Crossposted to Less Wrong
‘Like most of life’s dangers, the dangers of artificial intelligence are not easily identified from the armchair.’
J Dmitri Gallow
Epistemic status
I’m not an expert in this field, and herein I make some sweeping generalisations educated guesses about the overall...
Let’s imagine it’s November 2031. We’re both still here, AI is much more capable than it is today, but governments are governing, civilisation is still (mostly) civilised, and there has been no catastrophic loss of control. It just kind of didn’t happen.
What happens to the AI safety field then?
I expect people who currently believe catastrophe could happen within two or three years will start saying five or ten years. Then 15. Then ‘who cares if we’re a few decades of...
Thanks to Bruce Friedrich, Seth Ariel Green, Tobias Leenaert, Jan Willem Bolderdijk, Martine van Haperen, Herman Rohrbach, Chris Popa and Elizabeth Alvarez for comments. Claude helped structure the text. Ideas and mistakes are my own. I currently work with ProVeg International. The prize I propose would be defined and judged by an independent committee, and its money would fund scaling the winning solution(s), not ProVeg or the winner.
TL/DR
* EA could d...
Should "agree" and "disagree" be anonymous?
What's the reason that "agree" and "disagree" are anonymous? I find it frustrating when someone clicks the "disagree" button, and then there's no accompanying post to explain the disagreement. I assume that most (all? almost all?) people on the forum would be happy to own their disagreements here, and that would also be good for transparency, etc. Curious to hear others' thoughts (and worried that I'm being incredibly obtuse).
I disagree-voted, here is my explanation of why:
It is good for people to write a comment explaining their disagreement. But if you de-anonymize agree-voting, the main outcome won't be that people explain their reasoning; it will be that people stop voting. Some people will not feel comfortable attaching their name to a dissenting vote.
I think it's better to make it easy for people to leave cheap anonymous signals. Writing an explanatory comment should be encouraged but not required.
I appreciate you explaining your disagree vote, Michael - thank you. I thought it would be really funny if folks just flooded my comment with disagree votes, with no explanation, LOL.
That said, it seems to me that the value of an anonymous disagree vote is negligible (or perhaps even negative), unless there's an explanation. What do you see as the value of "cheap anonymous signals"?
Here's why I think they're not valuable (and likely counter-productive):
For a lengthy post (i.e., this one) where someone clicks "disagree," I guess it's just with the top-line message? I don't know if that assumption is correct. And even if it is, I don't know why they disagree. Does this add to understanding in some way? Or is there some other value I'm not seeing?
If someone simply wrote "No" as their comment (the practical effect of a disagree vote, I think), is that a useful contribution? I think that would run afoul of the forum's posting guidance in multiple ways. How is an anonymous disagree vote different from that?
There are forum principles around respectful disagreement and general EA principles around transparency. Anonymous disagree votes feel to me like they violate both of those.
What principles do anonymous disagree votes uphold?
This is for anyone, of course, not just Michael!
At least in some cases it's clear what a disagree-vote means, and it's often a useful signal to know how many people agree or disagree. Especially if there's something I haven't really thought about, and seeing the votes gives a quick vibe check.
Yes I share this frustration. I often see agree-votes or disagree-votes that I don't know how to interpret. LessWrong has the ability to (non-anonymously) highlight specific passages and agree-vote or disagree-vote just those passages, which I like.
Hi Bruce! I recently attended a Zoom book talk you gave and I really enjoyed it. :)
My answer to your question:
It can be frustrating when people just click disagree and don't explain why, but I don't know that making agree and disagree votes non-anonymous would make much difference. I assume if people want to explain why they disagree they'll write a comment, and if they don't they won't. If disagree votes were non-anonymous, would it result in more people writing comments explaining why they disagree? Well, why would it?
In my view, agree and disagree votes and karma upvotes and downvotes are not all that meaningful, anyway. I find them be a hard-to-ignore distraction from meaningful engagement with people through words, rather than votes. If you create a points system, everybody wants to go for a high score, but that's not the point of a forum.
Overall I would generally just caution people from investing much time or emotional energy in the EA Forum. It's a perfectly fine place to post announcements for organizations like the Good Food Institute and answer questions. In terms of actual deep, meaningful discussion, it's better to seek out — or even create — alternatives. The culture here is sour and trollish. Rather than enforcing norms of civility, the moderators encourage and even engage in the bad behaviour themselves. The only hope I can see of this changing would be if the Centre for Effective Altruism were to choose new people to run the forum who were committed to changing the culture. But what are the odds of that happening?
Anyway, that's a bit of a digression.