I often see this pattern if I talk about anything controversial: 2 or 3 initial downvotes, followed by more upvotes. It can also just stay at -3 and never go up. Then sometimes, I get 50 or 90 upvotes.

The CIA got thousands of innocent people crippled or killed just to track down one man. Quite possibly millions, depending on how long it goes on and how widespread it becomes again.

The thought process seems to assume that they can be "invisible" and their activities have no externalities or long term repercussions. It's analogous to injection with needles. The assumption holds true for small n. It falls apart with large n.

I suspect (based on things some of the mods have said) is that while the number of upvote points is capped, the number of negative points isn't, with the intention of keeping a bad comment from crashing someone's karma. As such, for controversial posts (that a chunk of people feel strongly enough to vote about), the post can quickly hit a negative but then eventually be overwhelmed by positive votes (as long as it isn't flagged for one reason or another).

Serious question: is impersonating aid workers a violation of the Geneva convention or other international law?