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Mob-Sourcing — the Prejudice of Crowds
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet takes a look at how crowd-moderation can capture and reflect the prejudice of individuals. 'As more web content is crowd-sourced and crowd-moderated, are we seeing only the wisdom of crowds? No, we're also seeing their prejudice. The Internet reflects both the good and ugly in human nature. ... Any system relying on people implicitly encodes prejudices as well. In a world where one politician with a call girl is forced to resign and another is handily reelected, there is no hope for moral or intellectual consistency in crowd-sourced or moderated content.'"
Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Slashdot very long.
Someone needs to give it a mathematical treatment.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Welcome back to reality newbs!
Who, ANYPLACE, promised you prejudice-free surfing on any site on the Internet?
And did you buy a bridge from them?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
After giving it a bit of thought, I don't think consistency is too much of a problem. Things that 100% of people like will be up 100% of the time. Things 99% of people like will be up 99% of the time. If only half of people think it is proper, it will be removed half the time. And so on, until we reach the things everybody hates, which will be immediately removed. What happens is that things some people dislike will be reduced, but still available, giving us a compromise - people who disapprove will not encounter it as often, but those who desire it can still seek it out and obtain it. Sure, edge cases may be problematic - if only one in a thousand people considers something acceptable, it will be difficult to find; people who are easily offended will still be often offended. But those are the outliers - for the majority of the probability distribution, it will be relatively fair. Much more so than letting a select few moderate all the content, at any rate - by increasing the number of moderators, you decrease the effect any one has.
Also called the illusion of confidence.
...not having RTFA, that the article is bogus.
Who's with me?
Shocked, I tell you, to find humanity in here!
And another great quote: a person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
More and more it appears the so called voice of the crowd is becoming the voice of the organization paying the spammers.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/11/02/follow-the-%E2%80%9Ctruthy%E2%80%9D-tweets-to-find-twitter%E2%80%99s-political-spammers/
I'll prove your first point, watch.
Jesus Christ is the resurrected Lord and Life giving Spirit.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
Yes the system you used to post your comment was created by a singular fisherman, that's why it's called the "net". /sarcasm
I'd hazard a guess that your karma is in the cellar because your Gallileo complex prevents you from fully thinking thru what you are saying.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This dude's butthurt whine about Craigslist is somehow cast as a contemporary political drama titled "Mob-Sourcing — the Prejudice of Crowds"? Am I in the .onion TLD or something?
Wait, so someone actually used crowd sourcing as a way to gather information for a study against the common wisdom of crowd sourcing -- which reveals that crowd sourcing is prejudiced?
They expect us to believe that their "wisdom" gained from "crowd" sourcing shows "'the wisdom of the crowd' is prejudiced", and theirs isn't?
40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
I think politics has its own brand of crowd sourcing. This sums things up nicely.
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
I disagree with the crowd all the time on slashdot, and yet my karma's pretty good. If you can express your point of view intelligently, it doesn't matter so much if you agree or disagree with "the masses". Slashdot's system is far from perfect, but if you compare it to other online forums, it's clear that a well designed karma system can mine the intelligence from crowds. The fact that wikipedia is pretty good, and that it is hard to out-guess prediction markets are other examples.
The web might be filled with prejudice but this is a guy who got flagged on craigslist as a business because he accepted credit cards. That would sound like a business to me too. I'm so sorry Craig isn't ready to come down and give you special treatment honey...
"Editor gets treatment he doesn't like, says them inner-tubes iz evil, news at eleven"
Welcome back to reality newbs!
Who, ANYPLACE, promised you prejudice-free surfing on any site on the Internet?
And did you buy a bridge from them?
Heh. No, I didn't fall for that old trick!
Say, did you all happen to catch a look at my new blocks of ice just outside the igloo? Pretty fancy!
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Actually, the last guy who promised me prejudice-free anything to do with groups bought a bridge from me. And a couple of routers or switches IIRC, and at retail price when they were well-used and obsolete.
I disagree with people all the time and am a downright asshole on here quite often. My karma is still high.
Of course, karma is an aggregate measure of reputation in a way. If your karma is low than you're likely a useless asshole to the community who is best gotten rid off. Not always but it's a good rule of thumb I'd say. Disagreeing with people all the time across every topic also likely means you're insane and delusional. Plus not contributing anything worthwhile, trivial to gain karma in various utterly neutral discussions, indicates you're here just as an ego trip and have no desire to help the community.
In general I found slashdot users actually quite good at moderating up intelligent and logical posts.
Do you figure non-RIAA music is better? Most anyone’s “better” is different. Fair enough, make the quality distinction that fits you without getting into label ideology. If the indie model really makes it better, let that influence quality and then make the quality distinction directly.
I say similar things about open-source.
P.S. – do you listen to really good classic popular music? That kind of stuff tends to be on the major labels just as surely as the modern mainstream stuff you’re likely decrying.
P.P.S – do you mean that non-RIAA musicians tend to focus more on the music itself, rather than nonmusic aspects? Steak versus sizzle is another hard to address “better” argument. I figure you need some of both, although I personally have developed a desire for a higher mix of ‘sizzle’ recently.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
That is precisely why an my karma is in the cellar. Anyone who disagrees with the crowd anywhere, even on Slashdot, will get moderated into oblivion.
The reason why you have your karma in the cellar on Slashdot is because you're a creationist with a long posting history. The first time someone is seen making posts like that, they usually get a reply explaining why they're wrong. But when they persist in posting exact same arguments, already thoroughly debunked in countless past discussions, again and again - yeah, you'll get a Troll mod or whatever pretty soon.
Not from me, since I haven't seen mod points in years now (I think I post too much). But I'm not exactly surprised.
And, yeah, it's "groupthink" for sure. I don't see a problem with it, though. "Murder is bad" is also groupthink, and I'm certainly fine with that one.
I call BS here. I don't think you got modded into oblivion for "mentioning that logic should dictate the outcome of a decision and not political motivations." Hell - I'm an extreme liberal and I agree 100% with that statement. I'm thinking it was probably something else that you said.
Show us the post that got you modded out of existence.
Was? Is? Whatever, I don't go there.
I noticed this effect the first time I saw Digg. A topic that started to trend would stay toward the top, and be seen my many more people, so it tended to trend even more, which means it stays near the top even more... and soon this bias becomes not just obvious, but enormous.
Theoretically it could happen even to a topic that was voted up by only a very few people, if they did it at about the same time. Which means that there is a certain amount of Chaotic nature to trending topics on Digg, and the eventual trends may bear very little resemblance to peoples' actual preferences, were a simple vote or some other measure taken for comparison.
Dissenting opinions are fine when they are substantiated. However, when the same opinion is repeatedly expressed without being substantiated, or when the arguments given in favor are obviously false (as they were reviewed and debunked when they first appeared a long time ago), and nothing new is added - such an opinion becomes mere boring drivel, and will get modded accordingly.
In a privatized society, the public space is owned by individuals and corporations.
It is thus not public but private. Owned and ruled by whatever incentives and agendas those individuals and corporations have.
Said agendas are thus usually politic, religious or to make profit.
There's your free speech right there.
Me, I like state-owned and thus non-profit institutions framed in constitutions defending the right of the individual.
Interesting how you stretch what he said beyond it's meaning in an attempt to support your own point. Good example of how not to post.
OK, I got it - as long as the dissenting opinions are acceptable and not debunked, they are acceptable.
Yes, if it's been debunked then it's wrong and as such of low value. Glad to see we're on the same page.
Of course, if they were acceptable and had been approved by the authorities, they wouldn't be dissenting opinions, would they?
Yes, the mysterious secret alien authorities running slashdot and sucking out our brains wish to keep you in your place. Now shut up and stand still while they insert the straw.
It's true that a well written post will often get good moderations but it's still very slanted towards opinions favored by the crowd. A comment that isn't particularly well said stands a much better chance of getting a good rating if it doesn't agree with the RIAA or extol the virtues of IE6.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
And I think that is how it should behave. If you agree with the people most of the time, they will be more likely to give you a listen when you have an opposing view.
But if you disagree with them on most things, why should they listen to you now? Karma systems like slashdot's do what we do in real life....learn from experience who is worth giving our attention to. There's good reason for it to work that way...given that our attention is a limited resource.
There's no way on slashdot to appeal this. In theory metamodding would catch it but I've tried it and it's boring (you don't know the context) and incredibly inefficient (because most mods are fine). It would be far better if you could flag a bad mod on a post and have *that* reviewed.
You have been modded up. Does that prove you're wrong?
That being said, have either of you bothered to think that English isn't the first language of all moderators? I just taught somebody who is struggling with figures of speech, I think. She kept writing stuff down from a movie, to show me, so that I could help her, and a lot of it didn't make any sense. I said to her, something like, "Are you sure that you put the words on at the bottom, and then copied it?" [i.e. put on the captions], and she kept saying yes. She looked like an absolute moron, but I didn't say anything. Later on, it dawned on me, that our language is built around the ability to redefine something at a given moment. We just have to replace 1 word with another to create a figure of speech, and if our listeners/readers have been participating in the context, then they'll understand without any problems. She was probably copying text from a character who was making fun of somebody. Perhaps the character was joking around, or criticizing somebody. I wouldn't know because the student never bothered writing down the context like I told her to.
Just in case anybody is wondering, she was wondering about something like, "pudge my arms around your neck". I suspect that in the original context [i.e. a Hugh Grant movie], the character was making a humourous recall to an earlier conflict, and saying that she/he had changed her/his mind.
1 thing I noticed about anti-group-think snobs, is that there is never any compelling proof that the critic fell into group think. It's always a criticism of other people followed up by evidence. Criticisms of group think are a prejudiced way of accusing others.
That being said, from own experiences, I was surprised that San Francisco appeared to flag people so often on Craig's List. Being the gay capital of the world, in my mind, I expected them to be a little more tolerant of things [e.g. high prices], but apparently not.
I suspect that people can reach only a certain level of tolerance. After that, they have to start being prejudiced in other areas. It would be like, having a million tolerance dollars, where you could spend it on 1 issue per person. If you wanted to tolerate 2 gays, then that would be 2 dollars. Maybe you want to tolerate 2 gays, a Hindu, a Muslim, WW II vet, and 3 family members, then that should cost you 8 tolerance dollars. It sure looks like you have a lot of money left, but what do you do about the rest of the world, since you only have 1,000,000 tolerance dollars? Well, if your gay friend is a Hindu, then I suppose that you could tolerate him for 1.5 tolerance dollars, but the idea is that you only have so much, before the next guy is considered an intolerant, stranger to you.
testing out my trending skills
I suppose that you are looking for each post to be moderated in and of itself. They also have to be moderated in the context. If you don't agree with the *AA, or if you take an unpopular view, then you'll have to write bearing in mind that the issue has probably been discussed here, at least a hundred times. Just repeating an unpopular view will not justify a good moderation, even if you are 100% correct. So, yes, a poorly said popular statement will get better moderations. We can't expect much out of the group, before we stop complaining.
testing out my trending skills
Which is useful as a yardstick to avoid, otherwise you're copy&pasting with your brain
It's one of the strengths of Slashdot's moderation in that it encourages people to mod up more than mod down. Yes you occasionally get "-1 disagree" but most people would rather promote comments they like than bury ones that go against their point of view. It's not perfect and some most unpopular views, even when well argued get modded down.
Compare that to Reddit and Digg which give you unlimited scope to mod people down and you end up with a mob mentality and a horribly narrow range of extreme viewpoints. If you aren't an extreme cop hater, pro-cannabis pro RON PAUL(!!!) and don't thinks the Daily Show is the most accurate and informative news source on the planet, expect extreme downvoting. Gotta love a site where you can click on the username of someone you're having an argument with and downvote every comment they've made in the last few weeks.
"Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Alert to the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, the Constitution's framers inserted several anti-majority rules.
http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/democracy/5496-Abhorrence-Democracy-and-Mob-Rule.html
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
Are you sure that Clinton lied under oath?
Clinton was asked, under oath, if he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton did not immediately answer the question, but instead asked what was meant by a "sexual relationship". He was told that a sexual relationship was a relationship where they had sexual intercourse. Clinton then said that he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
Clinton and Lewinsky had oral sex, but they did not have sexual intercourse. Clinton was slippery, but he does not seem to have lied.
This guy does inadvertently raise a potentially interesting question: from inside your own brain, how can you tell whether you are dead wrong or a persecuted visionary?
He's not the resurrected Lord and Life giving Spirit - he's a very naughty boy!
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Now, I have no idea who the poster is that you're replying to, but the moderation here is often unthinking groupthink. A majority of people here start from a common basic premise for their thinking/logic on many issues. Anyone who begins with an opposing basic premise, even though they are a logical person, will end up at a much different conclusion than the majority. Groupthink then kicks in and that person is derided as illogical and stupid because because they ended up at a conclusion that seems illogical to those who started from an opposing basic premise, and the moderation around here reflects that attitude.
Around here Christians and conservatives are stupid, irrational, etc... and ad hominen attacks against them are commonplace. Those posts are modded down sometimes, but more often than not are modded up on nothing stronger than prejudice as the common basic premise between the poster and the moderator. Logical fallacies, such as ad hominen attacks, are not good examples of rational thinking and should never be promoted as such. Yet, here they are on a regular basis if you devote the attack toward what is a minority opinion on this site..
I've also been on sites where just the opposite is true for who is seen as irrational and illogical. The secularist is modded as troll and illogical, and ad hominen attacks against them are modded up on those sites. Neither group of mods is doing a good job, and neither group of posters show tolerance for logic that has its origins in a basic premise that opposes their own.
What does it say about our society when we, as a society, are eating our own because of our differences in basic premises? How is this sustainable? How is this good for society? If this keeps on in the same direction it will end in some type of civil war as civility between opposing points of view is rapidly deteriorating. Both sides will have their own thought police. Is that really a society any of us want to live in? If you don't like that society you're the only one who can change our current direction as the only way the current direction our society is taking can change is for individuals to change. Government can't do anything about it, other than try to legislate what point of view is allowed, and I don't really think anyone wants to go there.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
I haven't gotten mod points in like 2 years, either, and I don't post NEARLY as much as you. It's really disappointing. I've even tried things like meta-moderating and re-enabling ads. I wish there was some explanation of how it worked.
And to keep this on topic, Slashdot definitely suffers from groupthink on a lot of issues. While eventually insightful, but dissenting comments may rise up to a 3 or 4 score, they often start off being dropped to 0 with moderations like "overrated" when they don't even have any other moderations yet. They have to climb back up from that which usually takes several hours or sometimes a day or two, and if it's not a particularly popular topic, that might never happen, and very often it doesn't happen until the story is pushed past the top of the front page.
By the time Slashdot's system corrects itself, it's "too late" for the majority of readers (and I guarantee the majority does not browse at 0 or -1 threshold).
It is definitely better than a site like Digg, where literally any political cartoon saying "Republicans are dumb!" is guaranteed to get like 1000 diggs and be on the front page, while any political cartoon saying "Democrats are dumb!" will stay at 0 indefinitely. But it's still far from perfect.
"Murder is bad" is also groupthink, and I'm certainly fine with that one.
Actually, that's not groupthink but a religious commandment.
One thing with those ten commandments, though. Of those that deal with human-human relationships and not the human-god relationship, they sure have stood the test of time. Lots of things were important then that aren't important now, but that list is pretty universal.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I've seen people say similar things about Slashdot before, it always strikes me that the people who are complaining give extraordinarily bad examples of how "Slashdot's groupthink" works. I understand the point that you're trying to make, but in reality there is little reason to agree with RIAA and no good reasons to extol "the virtues of IE6". The last time I someone complaining about a specific example, they were upset because they were moderated down for claiming that environmentalists must be planning to kill 90% of the world's population.
To be even more clear, in my experience bad moderation does happen from time to time, but the people who think it's common are usually crackpots who are upset that their crazy theories are ignored. Usually they think the moderation system is responsible, because the Dunning-Kruger effect is hiding the real problem.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The US is run by a mob, just luckily there are more than one of them.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
Without it, any argument whether held in your own mind or with another sentient being is just meaningless drivel.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
I wish I had some mod points for you.
Bad moderation does happen, but on the whole I think the majority of Slashdot readers are fairly open minded and intelligent. People here really seem to enjoy a lively discussion, but I think people here also have absolutely no patience for foolish or poorly structured arguments. Fringe perspectives get some credibility if they are argued coherently, but once a poster slips into inane ramblings people stop listening.
I definitely mod this way. I'm more interested in promoting a meaningful engaging discussion. I'm more likely to throw mod points at an unusual or offbeat argument because I may want to see how others respond to the post. In this way, something of value can be gained.
If a certain viewpoint is preferred by 90% of people, do you really think that 10% will keep a niche rather than be bullied & overwhelmed? What about when viewpoints are wrong? In vitro fertilization had overwhelming opposition when it was first pioneered, and human history is rife with illogical prejudice and absurd beliefs. I'd like to be an optimist like you, but it seems - with regard to religious or political issues - the majority typically attempts to impose its vision on others.
So-called "consistency" is overrated, because it often ignores context.
Often results in crowd response come down to some slight variance in conditions, that is subtle. The simple fact is that you cannot codify every possible scenario into a rule, so human judgements of anything can and will vary on ingrained cultural patterns of "what is right".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've not had them in years either. Went through a phase where I'd have them at least once a week, but it just stopped one day and never came back. Suspect I read /. too much.
Any rebuttal to your comment, even a very half-assed one, and especially the personal attack kind (!), is likely to get you, the parent poster, modded down. Happened to me many times, the mods are basically encouraging flamewars.
That's just basic "blame the victim" stupidity: The mod choice says "flamebait", and idiots mod down the person getting flamed.
You can't take the sky from me...
I don't give a rat's ass about the ten commandments, and I still hold to the "murder is bad" idea.
And really? "Stood the test of time"? A few make sense. "You shall not kill", "You shall not steal", "You shall not bear false witness", "You shall not covet your neighbor's possessions" still work. The rest about a "relationship with God" are a bunch of useless drivel that date back not even to a time of belief in a monotheistic divinity, but to the polytheistic environment of a jealous tribal god.
But the worst problem is not the edicts that don't matter anymore, but those that are missing. Where's the "no slavery" edict? Where did the Abrahamic god promise to strike down those who treat other humans like cattle? Oh yeah, there's like "treat your slaves well", but it's about as humane as "you can torture prisoners, but only for this long".
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
"In a world where one politician with a call girl is forced to resign and another is handily reelected"
This in fact has nothing to do with "mob-sourcing". It is the inevitable result when one political party prizes the advancement of their agenda over the morality of their members, and the other does not. I bet I could correctly guess the political affiliation of the former and the latter in your example. One political party in the U.S. regularly demonizes and marginalizes members caught in flagrante delicto while the other circles the wagons on cue unless the unfortunate perpetrator hampers their cause.
I guess so! I must have been wrong, and the crowd here loves the Lord! Honestly though, it doesn't matter to me how it's modded - I win either way.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
No, it's actually quite possible to believe that "murder is bad" for better reasons than "because an all-powerful dude who lives in the sky said so, and is going to punish you if you don't obey."
But that's only 50-60% of those 10 (different Judeo-Christian sects list them differently); and those prohibitions are hardly original to Moses, they're found in other ancient legal texts such as the Code of Hammurabi.
And they're not that good -- one would do better with the Ten Commandments of Solon or the basic Five Precepts of Buddhism.
The Ten Commandments were primarily a source of power for the priestly class, and secondarily a list of basic social prohibitions. As a source of ethical guidance, they fail it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Slashdot should have -1: Ad hominen, -1: Strawman, -1: Appeal to Authority etc..
In this case DNS and BIND might be modded "-1: Argument ad nauseam" instead of just troll.
People would have a field day "-1: Post hoc ergo propter hoc" they wouldn't know whether they should mod or reply with "Correlation is not causation!"
Eschew Obfuscation
I think number one thing that gets people modded into the gutter is misstatement of opinions as facts. They don't say, "I disagree because..." or "I think...", they say "you are wrong", which is very common in politics and incites flamewars and partisanship. It shows either a lack of humbleness and respect for others opinions or an inability to distinguish opinions from facts. It may fly in debate realms where emotion trumps logic like politics, but logic and reason triumph on this site.
Note that this isn't directed at you, its just my observations on the moderation habits of slashdot.
Morality is entirely subjective, although it often seems objective to the individual. So hoping for moral consistency is a pipe dream. Why even bring it up? A politician with a call girl is not really thrown out due purely to morality reasons -- voters make a judgment about their ability to lead them and whether they trust them to make good judgments and be the kind of person they want to have lead them, which are not moral judgments.
Currently hooked on AMP
Yeah, some items are so universal that they were even agree upon BEFORE Moses came down the hill. Like murder. I'm pretty sure murder was bad before Moses, and I'm pretty sure that murder was bad in China and India. So it didn't really originate as a religious commandment. Don't get me wrong, I think it's swell that it got made official and written down. "In stone" so to speak. For that little group.
But your statement makes you a troll for trying to claim that something as universal as "murder is bad" is the sole domain of one particular religious group. Actually, the "badness" of murder is kind of built into the term. So the first creator was really whoever first came up with the concept to differentiate different kinds of killing. Although it might have been a group effort, and it was certainly recreated by others.
You're religious, that's fine. You're christian, that's fine too. But the point you start making factual errors and claim ownership of a universal concept? And then get modded up for it? That's the point I have to call bullshit. So as to not ruffle your feathers too much, let me put it this way: There are the Mandarin, Indian, and Summarion words for murder. None of those peoples had any interaction with Moses or the commandments, so how did these groups of people know how to define murder?
Where's the "no slavery" edict? Where did the Abrahamic god promise to strike down those who treat other humans like cattle? Oh yeah, there's like "treat your slaves well", but it's about as humane as "you can torture prisoners, but only for this long".
There is no "no slavery" edict. Not everything that you were taught is bad is listed there, I only said that those things listed there are still relevant today.
Oh, and you do have slavery today. It might not be called "slavery" but today's servants are little different from what the ancients called slaves. Slaves were treated well, just as you would treat any other property of yours well. The idea of a slave being one who is perpetually whipped is an American image, towards their African-decent slaves. Every the Jewish imagery of Egyptians whipping Hebrews is largely derived from that image. Americans didn't have that nice "treat your slaves well" edict.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
No, it's actually quite possible to believe that "murder is bad" for better reasons than "because an all-powerful dude who lives in the sky said so, and is going to punish you if you don't obey."
I never said otherwise. I said only that it, like the rest of the document that pertains to human-human relations, is still relevant.
Are you so sensitive to positive aspects of religion that you just trolled yourself?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I guess so! I must have been wrong, and the crowd here loves the Lord! Honestly though, it doesn't matter to me how it's modded - I win either way.
How very convenient for you.
Bow-ties are cool.
:^D Maybe I'm wrong. Now that I think about it, /. always had a Christian slant. ;^P
I just noticed that we can no longer see what moderations each post got. How lame.
I'm happy that you got modded up, though.
testing out my trending skills
Confound you and your blasted Vulcan logic!
Bow-ties are cool.
Like the phrase, "deficit-neutral".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Pff. This is why "unnotable" material is deleted from wikipedia, because the material isn't notable to the majority.
So some articles, that people spent hours, if not days or months writing is deleted because one person thinks it's unnotable and gathers the meat puppets to kill the article. They succeed most of the time because the material in question isn't interesting to the nerds that run Wikipedia. But oh yes, we must have an article on every goddamn pokemon thing.
The pokemon articles and the star wars articles and the Simpsons articles and nearly every damn article ever written with the word "fictional" in the first paragraph is part of the problem - just the part that's harder to deal with. If you want to take that stuff on, feel free. I will applaud the effort.
Bow-ties are cool.
Convenient and thought-out are worlds apart.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
He didn't claim that they originated the rules, merely that they expressed them. Others have expressed them too. He merely noted that the ones about interpersonal relations (don't murder, don't steal, don't lie about others, don't covet what you don't have, honor your elders) have been things which most societies have agreed on for a long, long time. Hell, Bill and Ted said it well too: "Be excellent to one another" (I'm sure I got the words wrong.)
You're religious, that's fine. You're christian, that's fine too. But the point you start making factual errors and claim ownership of a universal concept? And then get modded up for it? That's the point I have to call bullshit. So as to not ruffle your feathers too much, let me put it this way: There are the Mandarin, Indian, and Summarion words for murder. None of those peoples had any interaction with Moses or the commandments, so how did these groups of people know how to define murder?
I am not religious, not have I any Christian ancestry.
As for Mandarin, Indian, and Summarion rules regarding murder, I know nothing. I merely stated that the document on which Western society based their no-murder ethic upon is an amazingly universal document which is relevant not only to the time it was written, but to all time. In fact, you further the universality of the document by pointing out that it's message is relevant not only across millennia, but also cultures.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
And to keep this on topic, Slashdot definitely suffers from groupthink on a lot of issues. While eventually insightful, but dissenting comments may rise up to a 3 or 4 score, they often start off being dropped to 0 with moderations like "overrated" when they don't even have any other moderations yet. They have to climb back up from that which usually takes several hours or sometimes a day or two, and if it's not a particularly popular topic, that might never happen, and very often it doesn't happen until the story is pushed past the top of the front page.
Well, I do post a fair bit of "anti-groupthink" comments, and it's not as bad if you know how the system works. The way the bias manifests itself is that, usually, given two posts making a claim with no references or logic to back it up, you will see the one in line with the bias upmodded, and the other one downmodded. Simply put, a one-liner such as "Windows sucks!" or "Copyright is unfair!" is "5, Insightful"; while "Linux sucks!" or "Piracy is stealing, sue the bastards!" is "-1, Troll".
However, this is still a geek place - and if you can prove your point, with references and cases and numbers - it is quite possible to get all the way to "+5 Informative" even on something that you'd think would run completely contrary to the "groupthink". You will usually still get a share of downmods (usually Overrated), but they are compensated by a slew of Informative/Insightful upmods.
So, while there is a disadvantage, you can make yourself heard and get the point across if you are willing to do a bit more for it than the other guy - which is still much better than on your average topical forum. Of course, if your point is such that it cannot be readily argued by logic or backed by references, then you have no recourse - but then the problem is with the point, not with Slashdot moderation system.
How can an opinion be substantiated? Is an opinion not by definition an unprovable idea?
No, an opinion is by definition an unproved idea, but it doesn't mean that it's unprovable. Of course, once you prove it, it's no longer just an opinion. Well, I guess you could say that Slashdot is not particularly welcoming to "just opinions". Note though that you're still perfectly free to write them - your freedom to express yourself is not infringed. But you don't have a right to force the others to listen.
Oh, and an inherently unprovable idea is called "religious belief". ~
Ya got these 12 people and theoretically they all have to agree on a verdict. But only one of them (in USA criminal cases) needs to vote against the crowd to cause a hung jury. Again, theoretically, nobody knows which juror it was, or what his reasoning was.
The difference between a court case and CraigsList, I guess, is that someone set up very specific ground rules about how a verdict was to be produced, and CraigsList just sort of said, "well, gosh, we never set up any clear rules about allowed posts, so maybe some random complainer has a point, but we're too busy to review the validity or the consequences."
I'm not sure which is worse.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Slashdot has the absolute worst form of moderation, except for all others that have already been tried.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
What does it say about our society when we, as a society, are eating our own because of our differences in basic premises? How is this sustainable? How is this good for society? If this keeps on in the same direction it will end in some type of civil war as civility between opposing points of view is rapidly deteriorating. Both sides will have their own thought police. Is that really a society any of us want to live in? If you don't like that society you're the only one who can change our current direction as the only way the current direction our society is taking can change is for individuals to change. Government can't do anything about it, other than try to legislate what point of view is allowed, and I don't really think anyone wants to go there.
Too late... The time for change was long ago, 1960's, at least in the US anyway.
So, while there is a disadvantage, you can make yourself heard and get the point across if you are willing to do a bit more for it than the other guy - which is still much better than on your average topical forum. Of course, if your point is such that it cannot be readily argued by logic or backed by references, then you have no recourse - but then the problem is with the point, not with Slashdot moderation system.
That is the way one should expect it to work in any kind of environment. The group generally has a prevailing opinion of a subject because they have seen, read, or heard something that has prompted them to come to that conclusion. It is only natural that it would take some convincing to sway that opinion the other way. One should expect that the ability to sway the group is both proportional to the strength of the counter-data and inversely proportional to the strength of the opinion and the original data from which it was formed.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
One should expect that the ability to sway the group is both proportional to the strength of the counter-data and inversely proportional to the strength of the opinion and the original data from which it was formed.
It also depends on the willingness and ability of the group to consider rational discourse as a basis for a change of opinion. ;)
But that actually exists on Slashdot. Despite what some say.
Several of the human-human relationship commandments are basic ethical requirements for a successful civilization, so it makes sense that they would stand the test of time. Is it possible that the commandments were simply a way to codify these requirements and supplement the additional authority of an invisible parent figure?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Now, I have no idea who the poster is that you're replying to, but the moderation here is often unthinking groupthink. A majority of people here start from a common basic premise for their thinking/logic on many issues. Anyone who begins with an opposing basic premise, even though they are a logical person, will end up at a much different conclusion than the majority. Groupthink then kicks in and that person is derided as illogical and stupid because because they ended up at a conclusion that seems illogical to those who started from an opposing basic premise, and the moderation around here reflects that attitude.
Generally the minority does not acknowledge that they are basing their argument on incompatible axioms. If they do then they try to justify those axioms within the framework of the majority and as a result make a logical clusterfuck of an argument.
What does it say about our society when we, as a society, are eating our own because of our differences in basic premises? How is this sustainable? How is this good for society? If this keeps on in the same direction it will end in some type of civil war as civility between opposing points of view is rapidly deteriorating. Both sides will have their own thought police. Is that really a society any of us want to live in? If you don't like that society you're the only one who can change our current direction as the only way the current direction our society is taking can change is for individuals to change. Government can't do anything about it, other than try to legislate what point of view is allowed, and I don't really think anyone wants to go there.
A society requires generally unifying basic premises to function, what alternative do you propose? If one group thinks anyone who says the word "Bob" needs to be killed then will you let yourself be slaughtered if you say it? It's an extreme example but that's the basic problem.
I'll skip the problem that in general the internet is a bad example to extrapolate onto society as a whole since the internet strips out all the nice empathy we've built society on top of. No faces, no people, nothing but cold text.
What you're describing is how human society functions, it has since that first damn town grew into a small city. Do you think the McCarthy population would have looked favorably on you saying you're a socialist in your basic premises? How about the Protestants voting for a Catholic President, how long did that take? The initial unions and the corporate owners sure got along didn't they?
Those who claim to be "accepting" fail as badly as anyone else for those very reasons. A "Bleeding Heart Liberal" will be all for helping Muslims but Conservative Christians? They're better off dead. And so on and so on. Eventually one side grinds the other one down or they kill each other or otherwise resolve their conflicts. Most of the population doesn't really care much, another problem with extrapolating from the internet, so it's not that hard to change their views. At worst they'll die off and their kids will have different views.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that the Slashdot community refuses to allow dissenting opinions on its boards. I'm just pointing out the obvious fact that the community opinion is a poor gauge of truth.
I agree with you that Slashdot is remarkably good at not down-rating good comments because they go against the grain, but it does have a habit of up-rating poor comments that go with the grain. That's fine, it's just worth recognizing that it occurs.
It's a point clear to most people on Slashdot, but too often public opinion is confused with truth. Increasingly, even news agencies seem to be touting internet polls as a source of fact rather than investigative journalism.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
How can an opinion be substantiated? Is an opinion not by definition an unprovable idea? If I express the opinion that Democrats are worse than Republicans, how can that be substantiated?
Ok, let me try an example. A substantiated opinion is one that has evidence to back it up, and no significant contradictory evidence. I could say something like, "My favorite team is the one to beat this season, because they've won their first seven games, and the next closest team has only won four. In the absense of contradictory information, that is a substantiated opinion. Someone else could have a different opinion, equally valid, such as, "This other team is likely better because they've had a much tougher early schedule, but still ended up winning most of their games, and their star player gets out of prison in two weeks!"
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The idea of a slave being one who is perpetually whipped is an American image, towards their African-decent slaves. Every the Jewish imagery of Egyptians whipping Hebrews is largely derived from that image. Americans didn't have that nice "treat your slaves well" edict.
Yeah, maybe God shoulda stuck in another commandment for that and then they would have. There are plenty of extraneous ones that could have been replaced by a more useful one like that. The three or four commandments that are relevant today existed in laws predating the 10 commandments, and in civilizations that had never heard of them. We obviously didn't need God to provide them for us.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No, it's actually quite possible to believe that "murder is bad" for better reasons than "because an all-powerful dude who lives in the sky said so, and is going to punish you if you don't obey."
I never said otherwise. I said only that it, like the rest of the document that pertains to human-human relations, is still relevant.
Are you so sensitive to positive aspects of religion that you just trolled yourself?
He gave a religious example as well with the five precepts, so it seems that religion is not the sensitive point. More like a sensitivity to dogma that attaches such significance to a rather shoddy list of supposedly divine commandments.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Several of the human-human relationship commandments are basic ethical requirements for a successful civilization, so it makes sense that they would stand the test of time. Is it possible that the commandments were simply a way to codify these requirements and supplement the additional authority of an invisible parent figure?
Seems plausible to me. Whoever wrote them, human or divine, was certainly wise. That is the point I was trying to make.
But I found it funny how the religious extremists (yes, those who fervently hate religion are extremists) took it upon themselves to be offended, and retort, and weasel their own implications into what I (didn't) say. It's like they enjoy trolling themselves.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Your points are well-taken, but they ignore the civility with which most of society has conducted itself in this country for centuries. The only other times we've reached this level of lack of civility was during the decade preceding both the Revolutionary and Civil wars. Yes, there have always been disagreements, and yes, there has always been fractious people, especially in political campaigns, but when push came to shove we have always united in a common cause and put our disagreements aside for the good of the country. Right now our country is facing a major crisis, and there seems to be no common ground. It's up to "we the people" to find that common ground for the good of our country for we are the ultimate political power in this country.
The way things are now there is little civility and very little attempt to reach some kind of common ground in which each side can view the other in a positive, or even a non-negative, light. The rhetoric has become so bad it's stopping all attempts to even begin to understand the other side's thinking, or even discover their basic premises. Slander has replaced dialogue and honest give-and-take.
If you think this is just an internet phenomenon you're incorrect. You should have watched MSNBC's election coverage. They abandoned all semblance of objectivity and openly mocked the conservative politicians they interviewed, while those not doing the interviewing laughed and tittered in the background at the mocking. They weren't even close to being civil.
Being civil during a discussion of issues isn't being "accepting" in the way you mean it. It means that each side accord the other the same respect they themselves desire. That's the only way honest and fruitful discussion can take place. Being so arrogant that one assumes they have nothing to learn and thus can be completely dismissive of the other side is completely unproductive.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
And upon what evidence do you make this claim? Let's see this proof....
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Amazingly, the US has not exploded into violence over a difference of opinion for over 140 years, and that one time it did happen there were critical economic factors that provided the bulk of the fuel for the conflagration.
I really don't see how the intellectual tensions between secularism and religion could lead to a civil war. Would enough Americans really be willing to fight and die over such ideas? I'm sure you can find some individuals on both sides who would be willing and able, but does the average person really care enough about this issue for it to get out of control?
I am not religious
Wow, swing and a miss on that one. Sorry dude.
But then why would you say that it ISN'T groupthink? Indeed, the whole universal-ness would help show that it is a construct of everyone. Well, everyone that isn't a psychopath at least.
He didn't claim that they originated the rules, merely that they expressed them.
And that it specifically wasn't groupthink, but rather this religious thing instead.
It's like my saying that "thou shalt not kill" is NOT a christian commandment, but rather a decree of Mohammad. Or some Indian yogi. Or good advice from my dad. But that's stupid, as it IS one of the commandments.
If he had said, "It's also one of the commandments" rather than "that's not groupthink...", that'd be factually true.
I think that the phenomenon of religious-haters look at the current state of "creationist" idiots who deny the obvious (science). That's not religion, that's idiocy, but they are a vocal bunch. Don't confuse "creationists" with religion!
Religion is science. Before the invention of the scientific method there was no way to quantify methods and test theories. Additionally, the smart few realised the need to tame humans. Religion was the answer to both things: it gave a reason why things happen and a reason to be tame (as opposed to barbaric).
As science (read: the scientific method, chemistry, astronomy, and the ICE) developed around 400 years ago almost every religion embraced it. The Catholics didn't, though, and that is where the schism stems from. But Catholics are not the only religion in the world.
Furthermore, there is no more problem of a duality between religion and science than there is in a duality between the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light. Each is used for specific situations when appropriate. Other that the "creationists", nobody is denying evolution, astronomy, or any other scientific facts.
As for belief in "some invisible guy in the sky" there is no more or less proof for his existence than there is for the top quark. You cannot summon either one at will, rather you must take someone's word for it. And for every scientist who has witnesses undeniable proof of the top quark, from where you and I read the books and learned about them, there will be 1000 people of all professions who will claim to have witnessed undeniable proof of "some invisible guy in the sky" (including scientists). The issue of "belief" reduces to which of the two is more convincing. Or, rather, finding no conflict between them.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Someone should post this on 4chan...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Religion is science.
No. No it isn't. There's the science of religion which involves neurology and sociology. And there is religion on science, like some shaman's views on what Thor thinks of electricity. You could argue there's the religion of science, like Sagan's shtick, or Spinoza's thing. Kinda. But science is not religion, and religion is not science. Both have been around a long time. Even if the modern science methods got started ~400 years ago. Even if the current flavors of religion got started ~2000, or ~3000, or ~100 years ago. Both science and religion are older then that.
As for belief in "some invisible guy in the sky" there is no more or less proof for his existence than there is for the top quark.
Except for the part where top quarks are observable. You're right that I myself haven't observed one, and that I'm trusting others, and that you could find a number of people that swear by his noodly appendage. But the big difference that makes the top quark more substantial then invisible pink unicorns is repeatability. If ask these people I trust how to go see a top quark, they'll answer that I have to build an accelerator and other devices. And they'll explain how they work. And why. And if I built them, as others have, I too could see the existence of a top quark. Meanwhile, if you ask a religious person to reproduce miracles, or how to see proof of god for yourself, there's a endless number of excuses, or rationalizing, or "well it's metaphorical", or claims that I simply don't want it enough.
And creationists aren't necessarily idiotic. I'm with you that the young-earth group is off their rocker, but the deists that believe god kick-started the universe aren't that bad. Now, Hawking released a book explaining why that's a silly idea as well, but I haven't really groked it yet, so I can't say much. I mean, a single photon interfering with itself? That's just crazy! Crazy I tell you.
So other then your post being full of bad ideas, yeah, I'm totally with you. But none of that rant really answered the question:
But then why would you say that it ISN'T groupthink?
Because it really did look like you denied that murder was anything other then a commandment. Which is about as silly as saying Jesus rode dinosaurs.