By my reading, every point raised in this post has already been raised on the EA Forum and gotten significant engagement, but your post does not seem aware of that engagement. Like, it gives no consideration to *why* things are the way they are, and the reasons why people might disagree with your proposals.
Of course I’ve read it, chances are some of the criticisms you’ve seen were mine, since I’ve been banging some version of this drum for half a decade. I’d love to see you actually demonstrate that “every point raised in this post has already been raised on the EA Forum and gotten significant engagement.” The critiques have mostly been ignored, gotten responses that ignore the main point, gotten responses that are just plain empirically wrong, or received an acknowledgement that it is indeed a problem, at which point nobody does anything about it.
Whose merit? Whose value? People who farm karma? Because that's what the karma system selects for, not "correct opinions." Opinions are about subjectivity. If four people vote to make the site blue, and a fifth person with more voting power votes to make it red, you're not being consequentialist by violating the preferences of the majority... you're supporting a form of aristocracy.
But even if you don't care about that, the karma system is still bad. It ensures that people who spend months crafting a critical technical post (with many citations, etc) will receive maybe a handful of upvotes, while someone who spends that time producing many many comments to the effect of "great post, I think [standard EA opinion]" will rack up the karma.
It discourages writing on technical topics, or writing in your native language, or criticizing high-karma users, while encouraging hundreds of conformist comments aligned with EA tone and orthodoxy.
As I said in the post: posts that get negative karma are deleted from the front page. So if you write a critical comment on an old post, the original poster gets a notification and can immediately downvote you off the front page, leaving you with less voting power than before. Is that a system that encourages scrutiny?
good article! always disliked the " higher & lower " EA concept.
I ctrl-f'ed "high" and "low", but I'm still confused. Are you saying that you dislike the EA Forum's karma algorithm?
yes
By my reading, every point raised in this post has already been raised on the EA Forum and gotten significant engagement, but your post does not seem aware of that engagement. Like, it gives no consideration to *why* things are the way they are, and the reasons why people might disagree with your proposals.
As an example, you talk about how EA funding mostly comes from Good Ventures. Pretty much everyone agrees this is suboptimal but there's no clear way to fix this, and proposed democratic reforms have major problems. Have you read [The EA community does not own its donors' money](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zuqpqqFoue5LyutTv/the-ea-community-does-not-own-its-donors-money)?
Of course I’ve read it, chances are some of the criticisms you’ve seen were mine, since I’ve been banging some version of this drum for half a decade. I’d love to see you actually demonstrate that “every point raised in this post has already been raised on the EA Forum and gotten significant engagement.” The critiques have mostly been ignored, gotten responses that ignore the main point, gotten responses that are just plain empirically wrong, or received an acknowledgement that it is indeed a problem, at which point nobody does anything about it.
EA is about improving the world the most. That is a consequentialist goal.
Ideas are debated on merit not based on majority vote. I don't think Democracy is of particular importance here?
Nor is treating all opinions as equally valuable a goal. Some opinions are more correct than others. That's why they have the karma system.
Personally, I like this direction. It is rare and valuable and it is should be protected.
Whose merit? Whose value? People who farm karma? Because that's what the karma system selects for, not "correct opinions." Opinions are about subjectivity. If four people vote to make the site blue, and a fifth person with more voting power votes to make it red, you're not being consequentialist by violating the preferences of the majority... you're supporting a form of aristocracy.
But even if you don't care about that, the karma system is still bad. It ensures that people who spend months crafting a critical technical post (with many citations, etc) will receive maybe a handful of upvotes, while someone who spends that time producing many many comments to the effect of "great post, I think [standard EA opinion]" will rack up the karma.
It discourages writing on technical topics, or writing in your native language, or criticizing high-karma users, while encouraging hundreds of conformist comments aligned with EA tone and orthodoxy.
As I said in the post: posts that get negative karma are deleted from the front page. So if you write a critical comment on an old post, the original poster gets a notification and can immediately downvote you off the front page, leaving you with less voting power than before. Is that a system that encourages scrutiny?