> Quantifying karma is a good idea

Why? Many people hold many opinions about me, almost all of which are wrong. I don't see the value in a global database of opinions about me which I can't control and which will affect me in ways I can't predict.

If you can’t understand the utility of a social karma system then you should probably ignore all airbnb reviews, amazon, and totten tomato reviews when making a decision, and give them all a clean slate.

It’s hard to argue those systems are not useful if implemented properly. Yes it can lead to prejudice if done improperly, and some prejudice is unavoidable (the whole point of the review is to do a lot prejudging for you to save time) to save on time and effort.

> you should probably ignore all airbnb reviews, amazon, and totten tomato reviews when making a decision

Those are reviews of businesses and products, not individuals. It's not equivalent.

I'd find that helpful. If a lot of people have negative opinion about you, you have no place in my life, sorry. I don't want to deal with some society outsider

I believe that is called prejudice. Prejudiced people frighten me, their moral considerations so unthorough, and this makes me think I wouldn’t want to deal with someone like you.

But I’d give you a chance first.

It's not prejudice. And big surprise, you're exactly like me, just unwilling to vocalize it.

The fact that people are rushing to downvote me for voicing a contrary opinion (and emboldening others to disagree and downvoting me too) is the exact embodiment of what I just described. Like it or not, human beings don't like outsiders and people that others dislike

It is a very nearsighted view of individuals and grossly oversimplifies people as intrinsically good or bad without considering how people change over time, or how they're ahead of their time and seen as right later.

Especially in the context of cultural production. We wouldn't have the Beatles ("more popular than Jesus" controversy, drugs, bed-in for peace) or probably any other rock/punk related music... also anti-racism, LGBT rights, feminism, and other social movements we look back on as positive would all have significant impediment to making progress if possible at all.

In a very narrow per-use-case context like rating a contractor on quality of work, or restaurants on quality it's obviously not a problem but the key difference is social-wide aggregation and enforcement of norms that sound good at the time (to a critical mass of people) but leave no room for society to evolve and improve through new ideas and beliefs.

Yes. We already have a silent score we give to people in our minds based on how much conformity is shared. It’s instinctually hardwired in to us.

Sure, and it is that generally harmful impulse that probably inspired the creation of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rwsuXHA7RA

This post gave me a negative opinion of you. See how this works?

Exactly. Thanks for proving my point.

Your point seems to have changed. The point of those replying to you is that snap judgements happen, and rarely are they correct. Your point was that we should be putting them into a global database for others to make second-hand judgements from bad data.

Growing up in a racist area and taking a public stand against racism would give one a very poor score, even after leaving.

Does it really prove your point?

What you said you'd find helpful is a "global database of opinions" whereas being down-voted on this particular site is a very limited context.

Would you find it helpful if I happened to be in the key interviewer for a job that you really want and are fully qualified for and reject you based on my perception of you here, bubbling up through data processing and aggregation into a "global" system that's totally opaque to you? And further, that my negative reaction adds more data and pushes your score down?

Up/Down voting comments here is totally appropriate as limited to this context. Applying that type of data, invisibly aggregated across all aspects of your life is what's seen as a problem, correctly in my view.

Ah if only there were more people like you in 1930s Germany.

"quantify" and "karma" don't belong in the same sentence.

Yep. That's like one of the key religious/spiritual beliefs. Humans are incapable of good judgment due to lack of omniscience. Nobody can make a proper moral judgment of any individual since you don't have perfect knowledge of all their past and future deeds and circumstances. Even Christianity subscribes to this idea "vengeance is mine". Ballancing of universal scales is best left to a mystical omnipresent entity that has access to every bit of information in existence.

That’s a pretty understated ‘if’