And since the upvoting and downvoting is silent and anonymous, the reasons for it should and I think do(#) tend to resemble the reasons of democratic voting, which reasons were discussed in Bryan Caplan’s Myth of the Rational Voter—the point of the book being that the reasons tend to be irrational. The result is a phenomenon that is overall irrational, with occasional exceptions.
Granted, it might not be much of an improvement if voters had to add an explanation, since humans are nothing if not fantastic rationalizers.
(#) I say I think, because since the voting is silent and anonymous, no one but the voters can actually know, so anyone else is forced to come up with a hypothesis which fits the voting pattern.
And since the upvoting and downvoting is silent and anonymous, the reasons for it should and I think do(#) tend to resemble the reasons of democratic voting, which reasons were discussed in Bryan Caplan’s Myth of the Rational Voter—the point of the book being that the reasons tend to be irrational. The result is a phenomenon that is overall irrational, with occasional exceptions.
Granted, it might not be much of an improvement if voters had to add an explanation, since humans are nothing if not fantastic rationalizers.
(#) I say I think, because since the voting is silent and anonymous, no one but the voters can actually know, so anyone else is forced to come up with a hypothesis which fits the voting pattern.