Comments like this are one reason why we added this guideline: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." I can appreciate the reasons for supercilious putdowns on the internet, but they make for lousy conversation.
I’ll try to not comment when I feel a sneer. Thx.
Expressed in my unedited (too late), it «feeling alone» ("feeling" alone) could have been read as "when feeling lonely". Which is not what was intended, but seems almost a point: if somebody is here for the greatest laughters, enveloping warmth, or tickling, I am not sure it is the place. Some language and thinking is fit here, some elsewhere.
No claim?
I have not yet managed to read (all) pg's interventions. I just read though that according to him "down arrows [can be used to] express agreement". As I tried to observe formerly, though, this contrasts with the direction of "reasoning". If one just "felt" disagreement, but cannot justify it (or will not out of laziness), there will be no progress, no discussion, no quality. The guidelines, I a pretty sure, specify to warn against cheapness, and there is very little cheaper than one's statement "I disagree [end of statement]". What are we debating for if disagreement is not rationalized? I was pretty sure we are meant to be reasoning here, not to do some expressive "performance art". (Note: which I do myself, as an aside luxury, always taking care though that the intellectual structure it accompanies appears solid. Never alone, never without the important bits attached.)
What I tried to express in fact to the user that seems obsessed about the idea that some "feel special", in my last intervention, is that "expression of "feeling" will be consistent with this apparent framework when it will be expressed within a rational framework, which will allow it to be managed within a discussion". Without that, it will not be "information exchange, insight and debate": it will be noise. The very fact that on average we restrain ourselves from joking, to try to keep density high, is indicative.
The quality of debates here are completely different from what you can find elsewhere: as mentioned, for example, YT and Reddit - where noise and low quality are abysmally huge. What is the filter that causes that increase, if not that using the "head" is promoted here instead of lower bits? (It was a rhetoric formula: I am sure it is that.) To quote Daniel G. (read somewhere else), "We are just trying to build a [cannot remember term] that does not suck". It is the direction of consistency with "intellectual curiosity" which is granting that.
Tireless moderation is what makes this place a bit better. It is the only thing that makes this place better. Remove the moderation and HN will immediately become a Reddit cesspool.