I think it represents what both pg and esr have expressed at some point: that good, or even great hackers, often don't recognize themselves as so until being re

I think it represents what both pg and esr have expressed at some point: that good, or even great hackers, often don't recognize themselves as so until being recognized as such by other good hacker. Karma allows us to get an idea of how we fit on the scale and see what our strengths or weaknesses are. If you make a post / statement and it doesn't get upmodded, you want to know why; was your reasoning to shallow, is there something that contradicts / disproves your view, etc. That's why there's the effort to keep fluff posts out; it changes it from being "hacker karma" to "interesting karma" at best and "amusing karma" at worst.