Hmm, I don't exactly disagree. But I think a major problem is that people optimize for votes (Goodhart's law) instead of what the votes are supposed to represent. This happens even without votes, and we can conclude that people are the problem... But still, if a lack of votes removes some of the cognitive punishment or reward of posting something that everyone agrees or disagrees with, and helps people focus on what's important, I think it might be a good idea still.
Lets assume that I'm wrong and that none of these problems actually apply to voting (that common critiques against voting are wrong). Now I want to ask: What's the benefit of votes? Do they just reveal information about what the average reader thinks about your comments? I don't think that's all that valuable, mostly because I don't trust the average opinion of a community as a judge of quality.
The crowd seems to be good at telling that something is different, and shunning it. But differentiating between "Different because it's better than what's popular" and "different because it's worse than what's popular" seems like an impossibility. The votes just steer one towards sameness, inside-jokes, preaching to the choir, saying what people already think and agree with. This is why echo-chambers and excessive use of inside-references ('circlejerking') happen.
Some places will have comments which are out of place because they're excellent or written by a highly intelligent people, and other comments will of course be out of place because they're garbage or written by mentally ill people. But votes (well, people in general) seem to protect against both positive and negative change. It seems like the familiar is felt as good, and the unfamiliar is felt as bad. To the point that people will joke about among us despite claiming to dislike it. This is probably a quirk of human nature?
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Hmm, I don't exactly disagree. But I think a major problem is that people optimize for votes (Goodhart's law) instead of what the votes are supposed to represent. This happens even without votes, and we can conclude that people are the problem... But still, if a lack of votes removes some of the cognitive punishment or reward of posting something that everyone agrees or disagrees with, and helps people focus on what's important, I think it might be a good idea still.
Lets assume that I'm wrong and that none of these problems actually apply to voting (that common critiques against voting are wrong). Now I want to ask: What's the benefit of votes? Do they just reveal information about what the average reader thinks about your comments? I don't think that's all that valuable, mostly because I don't trust the average opinion of a community as a judge of quality.
The crowd seems to be good at telling that something is different, and shunning it. But differentiating between "Different because it's better than what's popular" and "different because it's worse than what's popular" seems like an impossibility. The votes just steer one towards sameness, inside-jokes, preaching to the choir, saying what people already think and agree with. This is why echo-chambers and excessive use of inside-references ('circlejerking') happen.
Some places will have comments which are out of place because they're excellent or written by a highly intelligent people, and other comments will of course be out of place because they're garbage or written by mentally ill people. But votes (well, people in general) seem to protect against both positive and negative change. It seems like the familiar is felt as good, and the unfamiliar is felt as bad. To the point that people will joke about among us despite claiming to dislike it. This is probably a quirk of human nature?
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