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A comment on New paper quantifies how quickly Southern planters recovered from the civil war. Parent comment

Re:New paper quantifies how quickly Southern planters recove... by AnimalMuppet on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @08:09PM (#19620361)
Hate to break it to you, but downvotes do not prove that you are right. Sometimes they indicate that you're right and stepped on peoples' corns, but that's rare. It's more common that they indicate you're wrong, clueless, willfully blind to the available evidence, and/or being a jerk.

Using downvotes to validate your position is a logical fallacy. I see it often enough here that there ought to be a catchy name for it. Martyrdom Fallacy, maybe?

I kind of agree with your reply to citrablue, though - "downvote to disagree without explanation" is a really poor communication channel. "I was downvoted without comment, and now I see the error of my ways" said no one ever.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New paper quantifies how quickly Southern planters recove... by wallace_f on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @08:30PM (#19620504)
The point is that if I was wrong, there would be responses like, "what's wrong? How can I help, I would put my life on the line to help someone suffering from tyranny?"

But not one person has done that.

Anyways, about the downvotes thing. While focusing too much on the downvotes thing is kind of a distraction to the main idea, I can tell you I have a reasonable load of karma here and it is easy to get by writing comments stating the obvious, or agreeing with consensus. Controversial comments or novel ideas can be of high value, but garner low or negative karma. So I dont think you're really accurate about that. Further, generalizing about internet karma points as being especially meaningful in general contexts, like you did, is already a questionable idea.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New paper quantifies how quickly Southern planters recove... by thinkingemote on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @09:53AM (#19624612)
People tend to downvote because there is complaining about downvoting. There's also a related section in the site guidelines.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New paper quantifies how quickly Southern planters recove... by wallace_f on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @11:10AM (#19625448)
Ok, I can understand that, but in this case there is particular meaning and decision made with regard to the problems I addressed. You should take another look to understand that part of it.
[ Parent | on HN ]