What are these opportunity costs, what behaviors are they reinforcing, and what are the long-term consequences you are trying to avoid?
When I respond to someone who is getting downvoted, do you think I’m likely to have been spending my time doing something better? I can’t contribute usefully to a conversation about decision theory, but I can talk about plenty of other things to other people. Exactly what opportunities are being wasted, and why are they all of a sudden being wasted now it’s not whatever golden age there was before the site was going to hell? Are you trying to say intelligent posters are not posting because somewhere else in some comment thread some idiot is being talked to?
Is the end goal of this simply to have any conversation stop as soon as something gets voted to −3? Really? Three random people or 1 person with 2 sockpuppets can just end a discussion? I don’t understand why you can’t trust people to have conversations but you can trust them to downvote wisely.
Responding to the edit:
What are these opportunity costs, what behaviors are they reinforcing, and what are the long-term consequences you are trying to avoid?
When I respond to someone who is getting downvoted, do you think I’m likely to have been spending my time doing something better? I can’t contribute usefully to a conversation about decision theory, but I can talk about plenty of other things to other people. Exactly what opportunities are being wasted, and why are they all of a sudden being wasted now it’s not whatever golden age there was before the site was going to hell? Are you trying to say intelligent posters are not posting because somewhere else in some comment thread some idiot is being talked to?
Is the end goal of this simply to have any conversation stop as soon as something gets voted to −3? Really? Three random people or 1 person with 2 sockpuppets can just end a discussion? I don’t understand why you can’t trust people to have conversations but you can trust them to downvote wisely.