I disagree with byrnema’s opinions; but that isn’t a reason to downvote byrnema in this context. We are not discussing whether theism & drug war are rational; we’re discussing whether they are uncontroversial on LW.
gjm claimed the badness of theism is uncontroversial on LW; others claimed the badness of the drug war is uncontroversial on LW. byrnema provided a datapoint that disproved them both. Hence, I upvoted byrnema, even though the disconfirmation of our consensus disappointed me. I also would rather encourage bravery than discourage it.
This is not cut-and-dried, since we can also display our degree of consensus by upvoting and downvoting things we agree and disagree with. I guess I’m making a special exception for someone who provides us with datapoints on issues that we already know there is a general consensus on here on LW; while continuing to use up/downvoting to indicate my opinion of other topics (eg global warming). For instance, when NeedleFactory says he thinks there is consensus here that humans don’t cause global warming, that’s astonishing, and I should perhaps downvote it to show there is no such consensus.
The prediction “No doubt I’ll be voted down for this” proved correct. Is it rational to downvote someone for making a correct prediction?
I disagree with byrnema’s opinions; but that isn’t a reason to downvote byrnema in this context. We are not discussing whether theism & drug war are rational; we’re discussing whether they are uncontroversial on LW.
gjm claimed the badness of theism is uncontroversial on LW; others claimed the badness of the drug war is uncontroversial on LW. byrnema provided a datapoint that disproved them both. Hence, I upvoted byrnema, even though the disconfirmation of our consensus disappointed me. I also would rather encourage bravery than discourage it.
This is not cut-and-dried, since we can also display our degree of consensus by upvoting and downvoting things we agree and disagree with. I guess I’m making a special exception for someone who provides us with datapoints on issues that we already know there is a general consensus on here on LW; while continuing to use up/downvoting to indicate my opinion of other topics (eg global warming). For instance, when NeedleFactory says he thinks there is consensus here that humans don’t cause global warming, that’s astonishing, and I should perhaps downvote it to show there is no such consensus.
The prediction “No doubt I’ll be voted down for this” proved correct. Is it rational to downvote someone for making a correct prediction?
“No doubt I’ll be voted down for this” often does correlated with being voted down (or voted up a lot) but that doesn’t make it any less whiny!