Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted and I'm wrong. I try to learn from it. And hopefully others who think similarly learn from it too. Sometimes I p

Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted and I'm wrong. I try to learn from it. And hopefully others who think similarly learn from it too. Sometimes I post something that gets downvoted, but I'm certain I'm still right. I try to learn why I was an ineffectual communicator. Sometimes I try again and it gets downvoted anyway. Sometimes there are things people just don't agree with and that is ok.[0] Trying to whitewash your comment history is like what children do with instagram filters. It's a fake portrayal of what you believe or believed. The only time I delete a comment is when a thread is still active and I had some foundational misunderstanding or a momentary loss of empathy[1] for others. [0] The NSA has this program where they try to predict what will happen in the future. When they first turned on the program they tried to take the consensus view of what experts thought. The program met initial failure. What they came to realize after analyzing the data is that parroting consensus opinions is a low-risk, low-effort mental activity. There's no extra signal. What ended up making the program much more successful was focusing on the opinions that experts had that were outside the consensus view of their field. They weren't more likely to happen, but they were much more likely to happen than they were talked about. Further, because few saw these less-likely events / realities materializing there were less downside mitigating plans and processes. I think of being downvoted online—but still believing what you believe—kinda like that. You know that a good chunk of these comments are wrong, you just don't know which ones. But it is worth it to think through these things for yourself because you're adding real signal to the world. [1] Empathy online isn't something that's come automatically to me. But once I understood how actions cascade outward I came to appreciate how damaging curt or bullying comments are.