An off-topic aside: It's interesting watching the up/down votes on my post. As much as Hacker News likes to think of itself as self monitoring the substantiven

An off-topic aside: It's interesting watching the up/down votes on my post. As much as Hacker News likes to think of itself as self monitoring the substantiveness of comments, often times it degrades itself to simply trying to silence opposing opinions. How cheap. How little. My comments might not bear much currency, but the contrarian article that I link is substantive even if you disagree with it. While I don't think you are obliged to upvote my comments if you disagree with them, to down vote them because you oppose me is to merely to attempt to silence discussion rather than ensure that it is a quality discussion.