As someone who gets rate-limited due to downvoted comments occasionally, I can see a rather strong correlation between the style/tone and the response. It is very much possible to express controversial, contrarian or even outright silly views without being downvoted. The rule of thumb is to be respectful and charitable to your opponents and, well, read the room. The more your view diverges from the local mainstream, the better, tighter and clearer your argument must be.
It is standard practice when writing scientific papers to first demonstrate intimate familiarity with the views you argue against later. This is what you would want from someone else writing a refutation of your argument, right? So give them the same courtesy. You can cut corners if your post or comment is close to the mainstream, but it is not a great habit. If you want to learn how to do it right, read ACX, Scott is a master of this art.
it is a common pitfall to blame the society/subculture for the negative reaction you get. It is almost never a constructive way to proceed.
If you are in doubt as to how your post would be received, and you want to get through to more people, consider reaching out to someone familiar with this site to review your draft. Or to anyone, really. The bar for writing a post or a comment with non-negative expected karma is pretty low.
It is very much possible to express controversial, contrarian or even outright silly views without being downvoted. The rule of thumb is to be respectful and charitable to your opponents and, well, read the room. The more your view diverges from the local mainstream, the better, tighter and clearer your argument must be.
If you make a comment here, it had better be either true and necessary, true and kind, or kind and necessary.
Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary. Kind, in that you don’t rush to insult people who disagree with you. Necessary in that it’s on topic, and not only contributes something to the discussion but contributes more to the discussion than it’s likely to take away through starting a fight.
Nobody can be kind all the time, but if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics… And it had better be necessary, in that you are quashing a false opinion which is doing real damage and which is so persistent that you don’t think any more measured refutation would be effective.
As someone who gets rate-limited due to downvoted comments occasionally, I can see a rather strong correlation between the style/tone and the response. It is very much possible to express controversial, contrarian or even outright silly views without being downvoted. The rule of thumb is to be respectful and charitable to your opponents and, well, read the room. The more your view diverges from the local mainstream, the better, tighter and clearer your argument must be.
It is standard practice when writing scientific papers to first demonstrate intimate familiarity with the views you argue against later. This is what you would want from someone else writing a refutation of your argument, right? So give them the same courtesy. You can cut corners if your post or comment is close to the mainstream, but it is not a great habit. If you want to learn how to do it right, read ACX, Scott is a master of this art.
it is a common pitfall to blame the society/subculture for the negative reaction you get. It is almost never a constructive way to proceed.
If you are in doubt as to how your post would be received, and you want to get through to more people, consider reaching out to someone familiar with this site to review your draft. Or to anyone, really. The bar for writing a post or a comment with non-negative expected karma is pretty low.
Regarding this, I like to quote Scott’s rules for commenting on his sites: