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.
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.