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Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

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Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#121

Post by tokenadult »

chrischen wrote: post #114
tokenadult wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ignore the kkk. No, I decry the KKK. And the FBI infiltrated the KKK, and private lawsuits have largely bankrupted the KKK. The KKK gets plenty of push-back, and deserves every bit of the push-back it gets.

We should ignore the KKK. Obviously there will be times they will step out of simply just speech and opinion, and for that they should be punished. If they act out on their hate and prejudice that is. But if all they are doing is expressing an opinion then let them, for it is not for you to judge who shall have the right opinions in this country. If you disagree, simply ignore them, for truth shall hold them accounta…

But if all they are doing is expressing an opinion then let them, for it is not for you to judge who shall have the right opinions in this country.

Allow me to disagree openly with that opinion by posting a reply. :) The KKK opinions are so disrespectful to my fellow citizens, so factually mistaken, and so verified historically as causes of violence and social backwardness that I don't just ignore them. I dispute wrong opinions such as those of the KKK. (And I dispute similar opinions posted here on HN, even at the risk of my comments being downvoted, because it is important to provide refutation of such opinions for onlookers.)

About your legal advice, you are mistaken. The current law on free speech in the United States is precisely designed to allow (and, indeed, encourage) open and continual refutation of mistaken ideas on public policy. That is the whole point of the American experiment in free speech.

About your parenting advice, as the father of four children I call on you to provide references to your sources if you expect to convince me that you have useful advice on parenting. Who did the research, and how?

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

Are you a parent yourself? How many child-years of parenting experience do you have?

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#122

Post by chrischen »

Semiapies wrote: post #116
chrischen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Down voting is an official active punishment that is meant to discourage. Down voting is a form of punishment. Ignoring is not a form of punishment. It's passive. What you describe may be mistaken as an active form of punishment, but you're essentially up voting the non racists, not down voting the racists. You aren't punishing the racists for their behavior so much as you are showing support for the other side. You…

I'm afraid you genuinely make no sense.

Please explain?

How is not you surrounding the racists with anti-racists not up voting the anti racists?

You're showing more support for the anti-racists, not punishing the racists for holding their opinion. Not directly at least.

We can't punish them directly by means of jailing or criminal prosecution just for holding their views. However you can indirectly suppress them by showing more support for the other side, just as you can still indirectly punish bad comments through up voting everyone else. Up voting everyone else is not only a nicer way but a better way in terms of freedom of speech.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#123

Post by chrischen »

bendotc wrote: post #90
quellhorst wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bank account is just a silly number in a computer! The money only has value because other people think it has value.

My point was not to take the position that karma is an unimportant number in a computer somewhere, but that people often claim as much in defense of various scoring systems on sites like this and Reddit and so on that create perverse incentives for the users. I work on online videogames. You don't need to tell me the value of a number in a computer somewhere that means a whole heck of a lot to someone, and shapes how…

He's right the number is insignificant. The number just represents the sentiment of the person who gave you it, or the sentiment of the person who who down voted you.

It gets even worse if you're someone who worked hard for karma, only have it taken away by someone for your opinion.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#124

Post by chrischen »

Semiapies wrote: post #117
chrischen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as someone could type that, someone could also downvote because they were thinking that.

Indeed. And yet, while trolls get downvoted to pale gray happens, entire threads getting their comments downvoted as far doesn't.

Unpopular opinions can be down voted. And this does happen. While often it doesn't matter that an unpopular opinion is down voted because it may in fact be wrong, there will be certain cases where an unpopular but universally right comment will be down voted. It will be grayed out. But with a system that promotes and allows silencing unpopular comments, such a rare event will almost always result in a down vote will not just marginalize it, but actually suppress it.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#125

Post by chrischen »

tokenadult wrote: post #121
chrischen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should ignore the KKK. Obviously there will be times they will step out of simply just speech and opinion, and for that they should be punished. If they act out on their hate and prejudice that is. But if all they are doing is expressing an opinion then let them, for it is not for you to judge who shall have the right opinions in this country. If you disagree, simply ignore them, for truth shall hold them accounta…

But if all they are doing is expressing an opinion then let them, for it is not for you to judge who shall have the right opinions in this country. Allow me to disagree openly with that opinion by posting a reply. :) The KKK opinions are so disrespectful to my fellow citizens, so factually mistaken, and so verified historically as causes of violence and social backwardness that I don't just ignore them. I dispute wro…

> The current law on free speech in the United States is precisely designed to allow (and, indeed, encourage) open and continual refutation of mistaken ideas on public policy. That is the whole point of the American experiment in free speech.

You're right. And the whole point of not punishing for their opinion is so that you can criticize them openly. Imagine if we didn't let the racists make their argument, then we can not refute them by reason because there would be nothing to refute. So to let them express their opinions, then everyone else can openly see how ludicrous they are, rather than trying to hide them and their so obviously wrong ways.

The parenting advice is something I picked up from various sources. And it's based on the idea that we should constructively criticize, and not scold. I'm sure you've heard the advice to show young children the right way, rather than to tell them explicitly that they are wrong. I have a very young sister that was born when I was 16 (I think) and this is why I even listen to such advice.

I'm not a parent, but I was a child, as has everyone. And being a parent does not necessarily legitimize any specific parenting tactic one has, especially with regard to long term effects.

So the example I gave about showing kids the correct way to do things instead of scolding or telling them they are wrong is probably a better example. I'm not exactly sure where I saw the advice for ignoring annoying behavior to stop it, but let's forget that example.

But this example is more analogous to our current argument. Instead of telling people they are wrong, it's simply better to show them, and others, the better way. The better way should be enough convincing and any need to artificially make it better (by denouncement) would be prone to human error. But to have to show someone the better way would require cooperation by reality if you know what I mean. And such cooperation by reality would only happen if your proposed idea, opinion, or whatever is truly better.

In essence, I'm proposing that we humans do the upvote, because nothing bad comes out of doing that, and let reality do the down voting.

So by only allowing up vote we better prevent people from artificially marginalizing an idea.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#126

Post by evgen »

NathanKP wrote: post #109
araneae wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, my only comments that actually get upvoted are garbage one-liner humor comments. EDIT: I believe this is what we call irony: http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss323/araneae/hn.png

I upvoted you for the rather ironic screenshot. As for the best way to get upvoted: "Agree with the rest of the crowd." HN is a very "Go with the flow" crowd. In my observation it doesn't usually pay to have a difference of opinion, which is slightly ironic since this site is aimed at hackers, who, you would hope, should have unique viewpoints.

Every community has a set of shared assumptions and a particular viewpoint, this is pretty much axiomatic given the definition of the term. Most forum systems on the net are unable to deliver much nuance in terms of expressing this viewpoint, so it is easy to perceive "groupthink" when the bulk of the community disagrees with you. Where things get interesting/contentious is when people who share community view A assume everyone else agrees with B and get indignant or defensive when they discover that this view is not shared. There is nothing about "hackers" or startups or other standard topics of this community that necessitates a unique viewpoint, so why assume the rest of the community is going to tolerate large divergence from a standardized norm? Too much input from "unique" viewpoints usually leads to chaos, and that seems to be one thing of which the community has a low tolerance.

Re: Ask HN: Why downvote? I honestly do not get it.

#127

Post by [deleted] »

chrischen wrote: post #124
Semiapies wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And yet, while trolls get downvoted to pale gray happens, entire threads getting their comments downvoted as far doesn't.

Unpopular opinions can be down voted. And this does happen. While often it doesn't matter that an unpopular opinion is down voted because it may in fact be wrong, there will be certain cases where an unpopular but universally right comment will be down voted. It will be grayed out. But with a system that promotes and allows silencing unpopular comments, such a rare event will almost always result in a down vote will…

[deleted]
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