I find the down votes fascinating. I'm literally listing facts of the process which anyone can check. Maybe cancer makes people uneasy or something, or they really like drinking coca cola?
It strikes me as ironic too given the recent of essays on thought police and cancel culture.
We need a new kind of social media perhaps where different subs (like subreddits) can have some rules like only able to vote if you're over 14 years old and this is verified. Or can only downvote if you haven't downvoted lately. Let people experiment with rules like that. Maybe we will find better communication methods by letting people play with those kinds of rules...?
The second post you made in reply to someone asking you to clarify is thought provoking and fact intensive. the first post you made is very unclear and its meaning is not obvious. I think you got downvoted because it was more easily (mis)interpreted as sarcasm or as a troll.
HN does have a little bit of thought policing, but I dont think this was it.
EDIT: specifically, the phrase "If you think long and hard" is rhetorically redundant and shifts the tone from helpful/discussional to condescending and patronizing. IMO, anyway, but also probably in the opinion of others as you got downvoted by others.
Tbh I've been wondering about what removing downvotes altogether would do. I imagine without a low effort way to attack the post, many people would simply ignore and move on. Some would probably engage in discussion, which could lead to either good (or neutral) discussion or bad discussion full of irrelevant attacks and trolling, but that's easy to take care of.
It strikes me as ironic too given the recent of essays on thought police and cancel culture.
We need a new kind of social media perhaps where different subs (like subreddits) can have some rules like only able to vote if you're over 14 years old and this is verified. Or can only downvote if you haven't downvoted lately. Let people experiment with rules like that. Maybe we will find better communication methods by letting people play with those kinds of rules...?