You’re right, of course, that hiding those comments doesn’t guarantee that valuable conversations won’t wind up downstream of them. But I’d expect it to lower the odds
Karma isn’t synchronous, so the discussion can take place before the parent is downvoted. For example, this thread contains a discussion that probably mostly occurred before Eliezer’s comment was voted down to −4… making this very thread an example of the reason why this shouldn’t be done.
(Among other things, it means you can make an entire thread of conversation vanish by targeting a parent with a few downvotes, which really over-powers downvoters.)
Karma isn’t synchronous, so the discussion can take place before the parent is downvoted. For example, this thread contains a discussion that probably mostly occurred before Eliezer’s comment was voted down to −4… making this very thread an example of the reason why this shouldn’t be done.
(Among other things, it means you can make an entire thread of conversation vanish by targeting a parent with a few downvotes, which really over-powers downvoters.)