Would like to echo your compliments to dang. The only bit of pushback I would make to his point is that if the SSM really does exist, perhaps the correct course

Would like to echo your compliments to dang. The only bit of pushback I would make to his point is that if the SSM really does exist, perhaps the correct course of action is to reduce our participation as much as possible and move our engagement to less easily manipulated forms of communication, particularly face-to-face meetings. Perhaps, even if we do our best to post in good faith and make well reasoned, careful arguments, in the end we only lend a superficial credibility to a system which still has a negative effect in the aggregate (because it has been engineered to do so). And yes, I'm aware of the inherent hypocrisy in posting this on a (well!) moderated forum with a system of largely opaque voting and flagging. :-)