> But it is nowhere written in either probability theory or decision theory that a rationalist should not care. I've looked over those equations and, really, it's not in there.

You know, in all my childhood of reading Asimov I never believed I'd live to see this written in earnest (or close enough).

The entire essay fails at some basic level for me.

Background Situation: you maintain a heavy internet presence in which you write lots of articles on various "issues" and have attracted a sizable community of hangers-on who like to argue about the issues. The "issues" you write about are things you believe in strongly.

Puzzling Development: you have a fundraiser for the "issues" you care about and are disappointed in the outcome (more on this later, see (!)). You get some amount of donations but the most-visible response is a lot of arguing and discussion, which you (correctly) conclude is counterproductive to the fundraising process.

Possible Conclusion One: there's a sizable community of people who like discussing and arguing about these issues, the same way there's a sizable community of people who enjoy discussing lost, or star trek, or whatnot. The underlying issue isn't that important to them (no more so than lost or trek is important to losties or trekkies), but they sure do enjoy the arguing and discussion.

Possible Conclusion Two: there's a sizable community of people who deeply care about the "issues" at hand, as evidenced by the argumentation and discussion they exhibit. Sadly, the fondness for argumentation leads to counterproductive behavior when (eg) we try to raise funds, b/c the argumentation is public (producing negative feedback loops) but the donations are not public.

"Possible Conclusion One" seems the most warranted; there clearly are people who love arguing and discussion the issues but there's also clearly far fewer of them who care enough to donate (or otherwise do more than post comments on teh blog).

"Possible Conclusion Two" is more flattering to the writer but requires more assumptions about the community of readers and requires drawing more inferences from observed behavior than "Possible Conclusion One".

(!) Note that the reason the author feels disappointed is b/c the author looks @ the amount of donations vis-a-vis the amount of passionate argument the fundraiser provoked and is disappointed (that so much of the passion went into arguing instead of donations). This is tantamount to assuming "Possible Conclusion Two", as it is assuming you can correctly infer actual interest in (doing something about) the "issues" just from apparent passion to argue and discuss ideas pertinent to the "issues".

If you started from the assumption you had attracted a bunch of people who like arguing and for whom your "issues" are a kind of catnip -- the way losties and trekkies find lost and trek to be their catnip -- you might still be disappointed but for a different reason; you'd be disappointed with your ability to get your readers to make the leap from enjoying your work as "entertainment" to caring about the issues it raised, instead of assuming you'd already done that and then bemoaning their seeming inability to act productively wrt those "issues".

While I think you're basically correct in the context of a fundraiser (Occam's Razor suggest the more likely explanation is that most people don't donate to most causes and you weren't special enough to get around that), I still think Eliezer has a point in general.

I've observed this in online debating in general as well, to put it in a larger context. If I write something even modestly controversial, and get five replies, I guarantee each of those five replies will be nothing but sheer negativity and disagreement. Agreement is indicated by... simply ignoring the agreeable point. It produces a harshly confrontational environment. I have no idea how to address that, though; we eschew people simply posting "I agree!" for a reason, after all. "Voting up" isn't supposed to mean "I agree" either, though we all know that it sort of does in practice no matter how much we may protest to the contrary (or even sometimes stretch ourselves and upvote a good argument for something we disagree with; I've done it, but I'll be honest, it's an exception, not a rule).

Note that this message is not an exception, except perhaps inasmuch as I "throw you a bone" in the first paragraph. I don't know what to do about it, but I'd be interested in ideas.

I agree :)

Both replies and votes go to controversial posts more then to "common sense" posts. It's not surprising - replying and voting require some amount of initiative end enthusiasm, however small. It's worth mentioning that _always_ informative posts get votes, and usually replies, so at least in one respect the system doesn't fail us.

I do miss slashdot's vots. There is something very satisfying in voting Insightful, Interesting, Funny or Over/Underrated, instead of just up or down.

Anyways, I think pg made the right choice. Better to invest in keeping the community small and quality constant then in a complicated moderating system. At least for HN.

To step over the essay and get to your larger point, I think there's a conceptual error in assuming agreement and disagreement are sufficiently symmetric that it'd be reasonable to expect there to be a "solution" to the "problem" you're pointing out.

I think the actual situation is that "agreement" as such is communicated by actions (either cooperation or mimicry) and "disagreement" as such is communicated by talking (eg: 'u r rong and eevil' responses).

When you look at successful ad-hoc or loosely organized groups the common theme is outlets for mimicry or cooperation; eg:

- 'birthers' don't post "i'm so ghey for your evidence and theories" love-notes to each other on the movement leaders' blogs; they indicate "agreement" by taking the message to new venues (cooperation), starting up (or taking over) local 'patriot' organizations (cooperation + mimicry), starting new blogs advancing the cause (mimicry) and trade strategies / information with each other (cooperation)

- 'raelians' are actually a fairly ad-hoc and decentralized cult as cults go; there's lots of outlets for missionary work (mimicry + cooperation), 'spiritual practice' (mimicry + cooperation), and so on

If the "host" doesn't have outlets for cooperation + mimicry that are both (a) visible to the host and (b) beneficial to the host then whatever agreement it generates will either be invisible or not beneficial or both; in the same way, if you convince people with your controversial blog post the "agreement" you'll see will come in the form of people linking to you (at its most visible) as 'great post by jerf' and more often it's just some invisible-to-you uptick in what % of people have similar takes on the issue you discussed.

This makes a fundraiser for an institute to promote "rationalism" essentially a multiply-pathological case study with predictably poor results.

EDIT: forgot one thing.

"Communication" is a broad thing (most human action is communicative at some level or other). Different message types are best transmitted using different communications types, and I think this is probably unavoidable / not teachable.

When you frame it as: "I communicate messages of type A on medium B and only get back responses of type C, but wish I also got messages of type D" it's a little limiting; the fact of the matter is that perhaps messages of type D are going out in other media, they're just not reaching your attention.

I'm pessimistic in general as to how malleable the message-type and media-type pairing can be; my suspicion is that if you care about getting messages of type D you should first figure out how those messages are communicated -- eg medium E -- and then find a way to work with that constraint in mind.

This probably means that the current internet communications media are:

- productivity enhancers for existing high-passion groups

- allowing new, low-intensity, low-passion groups to get made that otherwise wouldn't happen (cf: shirky's notion of the coasean floor)

- ...not really going to enable the latter to graduate to the former on its own

The essay's author is bemoaning the fact that 99.9% of the people in online discussion groups are all kvetching and no action. It may not bother you that "everyone's a critic", but it seems to me that any attempt to label this essay a failure only serves to reinforce the point he's trying to make.

You're right, but the point he's trying to make is transparently obvious if you refuse to substitute "team of dedicated activists" for "online discussion group" that it's only a point to be made if you somehow confused yourself into thinking you had a "team of dedicated activists" instead of an "online discussion group".