I reject “too lazy” as a framing here. People have a finite amount of time and energy and if they choose to spend it on something other than explaining their downvotes, that’s not obviously unvirtuous.
(And explaining one’s downvotes is certainly not a minimal cost, especially not if one wants to do it in a way that seems likely to be helpful to anyone. E.g. my downvote reason is sometimes: “this seems confused; this user has often seemed confused in the past, and attempts to deconfuse them have been unsuccessful; I have better things to do than to pin down exactly how they’re confused in this instance”. Would it satisfy you if I just say that?)
Separately, I expect that the ability to downvote cheaply improves quality of discussion on net, though I acknowledge it has costs.
I find it mildly amusing that this comment has probably received more downvotes (gross, not net) than all but a handful of my LW comments, but so far no disagreeing comments.
Like, are these coming from people who broadly agree with me that silent downvoting is an acceptable thing to do, but nonetheless think it was a bad comment? I’d be fascinated to hear why!
(Other guesses that I have include: “it’s funny to silently downvote this specific comment” (I agree it’s not 0% funny); “you should see how it feels” (eh, maybe so; though this is not a cost I was previously blind to, also it’s less painful here than it has been on other comments); “silent downvoting should not be an option but since it is I’m not going to unilaterally disarm”; “you spoke in favor of something I dislike so I’m going to downvote”; “that specific reason is a bad reason to downvote silently”.)
I reject “too lazy” as a framing here. People have a finite amount of time and energy and if they choose to spend it on something other than explaining their downvotes, that’s not obviously unvirtuous.
(And explaining one’s downvotes is certainly not a minimal cost, especially not if one wants to do it in a way that seems likely to be helpful to anyone. E.g. my downvote reason is sometimes: “this seems confused; this user has often seemed confused in the past, and attempts to deconfuse them have been unsuccessful; I have better things to do than to pin down exactly how they’re confused in this instance”. Would it satisfy you if I just say that?)
Separately, I expect that the ability to downvote cheaply improves quality of discussion on net, though I acknowledge it has costs.
I find it mildly amusing that this comment has probably received more downvotes (gross, not net) than all but a handful of my LW comments, but so far no disagreeing comments.
Like, are these coming from people who broadly agree with me that silent downvoting is an acceptable thing to do, but nonetheless think it was a bad comment? I’d be fascinated to hear why!
(Other guesses that I have include: “it’s funny to silently downvote this specific comment” (I agree it’s not 0% funny); “you should see how it feels” (eh, maybe so; though this is not a cost I was previously blind to, also it’s less painful here than it has been on other comments); “silent downvoting should not be an option but since it is I’m not going to unilaterally disarm”; “you spoke in favor of something I dislike so I’m going to downvote”; “that specific reason is a bad reason to downvote silently”.)
He he… what do they call it again? Ah: cosmic justice. However, on net, you’re still doing oretty well. So.