

Ask HN: Why Not Upvote Civil Disagreement? - georgeorwell

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.<p>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?
======
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.

