Bomb Designer, Mars Expert Sent by Obama to Fix Oil Spill

Perhaps it can't be avoided in an online forum. Perhaps it's the cost of any type of voting system that is trying to save everyone time. But it's a really good way to miss the big picture. Any revolutionary solution to any problem is going to sound wrong at first. It's just worth remembering that sometimes.

If you disagree with someone, it doesn't mean you have to downvote. This may seem like a bit of a stretch (this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1350425 comment got me thinking about it), but there's a reason governments don't last as pure democracies. There's a reason they kill Socrates and make huge mistakes. The cognitive dissonance associated with 'mob rule' is a very terrifying thing. It's why we balance it with other branches of government, etc. Why we have constitutions, bills of rights that protect a minority's viewpoint from majority rule, in law, etc.

Hacker News, newsgroups, the internet...don't have that balance. So the responsibility is with everyone to be even more circumspect, to allow more breathing room, instead of simply reaching for the easy downmod.

Or maybe Hacker News isn't a 'classroom'. Maybe it's only for people who don't take much risk in their posts. I suppose there's some value in that. I admit though it seems less honest, interesting and helpful to me as a site for helping startups or people with a startup-like mentality.