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andaiyesterday at 9:55 PM1 replyview on HN

I seem to recall a rule about "don't downvote something because you disagree with it", but I can't find anything like that.

Not sure if that's really solvable with rules, though.

My experience with downvotes is that people mostly use it as a "I don't like this" button, which is proxy for "I couldn't think of a counterargument so I don't want to look at it."

(I noted recently that downvotes and counterarguments appear to be mutually exclusive, which I found somewhat amusing.)

Whereas I will often upvote things I personally disagree with, if they are interesting or well reasoned. (This seems objectively better to me, of course, but maybe it's personality thing.)


Replies

dangyesterday at 10:00 PM

Oh that one is a classic case of people 'remembering' a rule that never existed - there's a name for this illusion but I forget what it is.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for history...

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