Ask HN: What kind of a downvoter are you?
Never downvote. If a comment was just racial slurs or something, others will downvote. Otherwise, never downvote an idea regardless of &#x27;provocativeness&#x27; or otherwise. In fact the provocative approach can often be what breaks cognitive dissonance. hunter s thompson or matt taibbi for example do this well. Gonzo journalism is easier to consume than yellow journalism coming from mass media.<p>&gt;For example, I&#x27;ll sometimes see a massively downvoted comment that&#x27;s constructive and beautifully written, but it carries an opinion that is not currently popular for whatever reason.<p>Agreed. This is toxic to community and shuts down discussion. In fact I might even suggest that this happening essentially breaks the community. Not sure what to call it, but its not a community anymore.<p>&gt;I believe that downvoting someone just because you disagree with them is terrible for a discussion network like HN. Moreover, I would say that I learned the most from the comments that I disagreed with - on all levels, politically, technologically, personally.<p>This is really bad on HN. Not as bad as Reddit obviously. This has been more recently bad because we are a society inflection point. Reddit&#x2F;HN are just the battlegrounds. Hell even the universities are battegrounds. Back in the day the universities were all about free speech and having diverse discussions about everything. Today? That sure isnt happening anymore.<p>The exercise here isn&#x27;t about how to get better discussions. It&#x27;s about identifying the discussions you&#x27;re not allowed to have. Climate change for example is completely off limits. Why is it off limits? There&#x27;s a significant number of people who believe we are on the verge of human extinction. To argue against climate change in any degree is tantamount to encouraging or contributing to our extinction. That&#x27;s literally terms of war.<p>It&#x27;s interesting to try to find all the issues you aren&#x27;t allowed to discuss on HN. You can then also see who is doing it and why. The curious thing is why they are so secretive.<p>When you understand, how does it work out? What&#x27;s going to be the event that fixes this? It&#x27;s going to take a major event. World war against china? A greater depression? They are right and we will be extinct in about 10 years? It&#x27;s unclear what it will be, but there&#x27;s something bad coming.