I would argue that drug addiction is affecting older adults much more severely than youth.
I can definitely agree that social cohesion in America has been somewhat awful for generations.
pg has explicitly said that downvotes on Hacker News can be used for disagreement.
"Downvotes to express disagreement are part of the ethos of this site; it's a norm Paul Graham established almost a decade ago."
How? The point system is the gamification of the forums. It's designed to spur conversation while also an attempt at self moderation. When someone posts a controversial but trailblazing comment, like say "Scrum Agile doesn't work very well for their company and here's why," the barrage of downvotes from the orthodoxy makes that person lose points and disincentivizes them from making any more controversial posts (unless they just don't give a damn).
Ergo, the conversation gravitates towards whatever the herd thinks is best. It's rewarding conventional thinking and discouraging unorthodox thought, which is poison to any technological discussion. Technology and in fact progress itself was built on questioning and even destroying the conventional.
But yes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Let’s stop discussing voting now, though. I agree with the mods here that it makes for very boring reading.
I down voted because it's a comment with unsubstantiated claims, only tangible related to the article.