It looks like that comment had fluctuating karma both before and after today—it’s hardly mass-downvoting if the comment never goes below −1. Also, AFAICT the people who downvoted were doing it because they thought Dmytry was confused about evolution and/or hill-climbing algorithms. I don’t know enough about hill-climbing to say for sure if he was making a mistake worthy of downvoting.
That said, I have updated in favor of people sometimes downvoting for disagreement, and I don’t approve of that. I generally try to avoid it myself. For instance, I haven’t downvoted anything from Dmytry that I disagree with, because I think his points are intelligent enough to be worth making. Thanks for pointing out that example.
Please note that mass-downvoting has happened to others recently. I would hope that sockpuppetry hasn’t become an accepted mode of social discourse here (per Reddit), but it may be too late.
Since you ask: I noted here an example of answering the actual question getting a downvote. (And the fact of me noting it got downvoted too.)
edit: at time of making this comment, the linked comment and the comment it points to were both at −1.
It looks like that comment had fluctuating karma both before and after today—it’s hardly mass-downvoting if the comment never goes below −1. Also, AFAICT the people who downvoted were doing it because they thought Dmytry was confused about evolution and/or hill-climbing algorithms. I don’t know enough about hill-climbing to say for sure if he was making a mistake worthy of downvoting.
That said, I have updated in favor of people sometimes downvoting for disagreement, and I don’t approve of that. I generally try to avoid it myself. For instance, I haven’t downvoted anything from Dmytry that I disagree with, because I think his points are intelligent enough to be worth making. Thanks for pointing out that example.
Please note that mass-downvoting has happened to others recently. I would hope that sockpuppetry hasn’t become an accepted mode of social discourse here (per Reddit), but it may be too late.