[beambot]

Why the downvotes?

Seems like a well-reasoned hypothesis and contributes to the overall discussion. Has HN become that critical of different opinions that downvotes are used to punish dissent rather than using upvotes to indicate agreement?

[Kinnard]

Sometimes downvotes mean people just disagree not that the comment was malformed.

[gist]

I actually UPVOTED when I saw "implies a pretty big perceived power imbalance". It's possible that the downvotes took that as a negative where I was in agreement.

Downvotes (for whatever reason) mean that more people vote down than vote up (duh). As a result they can change simply because of the people that are reading a particular comment stream. Same comment on a different post could have entirely different results vote wise (at least when it's an intelligent comment as yours was).

[elmar]

Who cares about downvotes! just enter the "Aspergian mindset" and write what you think is right.

If you are looking for social feedback you will never get far on startups.

[Kinnard]

Well, users are social feedback . . .