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Ask HN: Why Not Upvote Civil Disagreement?

3 points by georgeorwell ↗ HN
Instead of downvoting all comments that you disagree with, if you upvote the civil disagreements then you will help to curate deeper and more meaningful discussions. Upvotes are a reward for good behaviour - they release dopamine in the brain - and civil disagreement is not bad behaviour.

Of course, this means nothing without an official seal since PG already proclaimed that you should downvote disagreements. But I thought it might be worth a discussion. Are there any downsides to this proposal?

1 comment

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ggchappell
An excellent idea. But I don't think it's going to become terribly common. It runs entirely contrary to the very common thinking that upvote means agreement.

You might get lots of people to do it if there were two sets of arrows, something like signal/noise and agree/disagree. But that has been proposed before.

> Are there any downsides to this proposal?

None that I can see. In any case, many of us already do this.

> Of course, this means nothing without an official seal since PG already proclaimed that you should downvote disagreements.

I very much disagree with PG's famous statement. I wish he'd reconsider.