1. Resist complaining about downvotes. It makes boring reading (and hence gets downvoted). This is literally one of the guidelines.
2. If you find yourself saying "Downvoted because I <position in an argument>, really?", the answer is always, no, downvoted because you expressed <position in an argument> in a non-constructive manner that nobody wanted to read. If you had expressed <opposite position> in the same way, you'd have been downvoted too. This might be that you were overly aggressive, this might be that you were insufficiently clear in making your point, this might be because both <position> and <opposite position> are dead horses, etc.
But the answer is always no.
A lot of times if your tone is unintentionally off you'll get a few initial downvotes but other people will see your intentions and bring you up out of the grey, which is what happened here. You're continuing to get downvoted on other comments because they're contributing to a discussion nobody wants to see, the discussion about the discussion. It's best to just stick to the topic, and treat downvotes and the score in general as the ultimately meaningless internet points that they are. HN prizes the generally high signal-to-noise ratio of the comments.
Also Bitcoin is a political topic, one that will draw lots of people who will downvote you just because they don't agree with you.
There's some truly transformative tech at the core of Bitcoin, which is why it's been as successful as it has been (and will be) as a technology. On the other hand, there really is a contingent of supporters that primarily has a profit motive.
I've come to see it like politics. People pick a side and then become extreme about it, to no one's real benefit.
People are weird about money, in several directions at once. Bitcoin is money. Therefore people are weird about Bitcoin.
That's my theory, anyway.
Which the HN community helpfully confirms by downvoting your perfectly reasonable comment.
I think Bitcoin tickles a rather deep-rooted fear in many people.
Money is fundamental to everyone's existence and has always been exclusively issued and controlled by "the authority". Seeing a completely different system appear out of nowhere, and seeing it actually work (on a small scale), triggers a strong enough anxiety-reflex in enough people for every debate about Bitcoin to immediately derail into discussing BTC as if its definite purpose was to replace "real money", starting tomorrow, completely and entirely, and to devalue my pension fund in the process.
When enthusiastic bitcoin supporters parade around this kind of nonsense while simultaneously heaping on volumes of nebulous praise like "transformative", "revolutionary", "world-changing", likening bitcoin to the early internet, claiming it will stop wars, stop corruption, free the people and all the rest, it really puts up red flags for a lot of people.
Then how would you explain this irrational aggression in every Bitcoin thread?
As a case in point, why were you so eager to follow up with a strawman of your own:
heaping on volumes of nebulous praise like "transformative", "revolutionary", "world-changing", likening bitcoin to the early internet, claiming it will stop wars, stop corruption, free the people and all the rest
Neither waterlesscloud nor me wrote or implied anything like that.
Why do you attack something stupid that someone else once said about Bitcoin, rather than presenting an actual argument versus my "intellectually insulting" idea that Bitcoin might touch on some mammalian "fear of change", or against any of waterlesscloud's observations?
I don't consider downvotes aggression. I don't consider skepticism or even a general dislike of bitcoin to be aggression either. As far as the the discussion goes, bitcoin discourse is no more aggressive than any other technical topic on this forum.
> Neither waterlesscloud nor me wrote or implied anything like that.
A direct quote from waterlesscloud: >There's some truly transformative tech at the core of Bitcoin.
waterlesscloud is only one example: ctr+f "revolutionary" or "early internet" in this thread for others. It's not a strawman because I'm not making an argument, I'm giving you examples of enthusiast rhetoric that turns people off; it's not "something stupid that someone else once said", it's a category of condescending platitudes commonly laid out by bitcoin enthusiasts.
> presenting an actual argument versus my "intellectually insulting" idea that Bitcoin might touch on some mammalian "fear of change"
My point is that painting bitcoin skeptics as irrational people who can't help but lash out due to a subconscious fear of what bitcoin might mean for world economics is insulting and also subtly pushes the narrative that bitcoin is such a clearly amazing technology that it would be reasonable to ascribe fear of bitcoin's success as a motivator for negative reactions to bitcoin. It's absurd.
Calling the blockchain technology transformative doesn't put him in a bucket with people claiming "it will stop wars, stop corruption, free the people".
Even if you disagree with that assertion, his comment was about the discussion culture surrounding bitcoin and certainly didn't deserve any downvotes. (the irony of seeing this particular comment grayed out was what triggered mine after all...)
My point is that painting bitcoin skeptics as irrational people
What's with the generalizations?
I wrote "many people" and not "bitcoin skeptics".
I was referring to people who can't be bitcoin skeptics by the sheer virtue of not knowing enough about it to form a coherent argument against it. People who seem to never get tired of regurgitating the ever same tulip bulb and "criminals" trites at every opportunity. People who downvote completely innocent comments like the one from waterlesscloud and make any normal discussion about the subject needlessly hard.
Bitcoin skeptics are most welcome (I consider myself one), but you rarely see someone who actually knows a thing about Bitcoin (e.g. 0xFEED) bother posting in amidst the shitstorm anymore.