I think that's a terrible approach. There are plenty of times when the most popular opinion isn't necessarily correct. Downvotes are a way to suppress discussio

I think that's a terrible approach. There are plenty of times when the most popular opinion isn't necessarily correct. Downvotes are a way to suppress discussion—they should only be used in obvious cases of factual errors, logic fallacies, mean spirit, etc. The proper response to disagreement is a follow-up comment. The problem is that up/downvoting is used by the software to determine how prominently the comment should be shown—even, in extreme cases, hiding it completely. If the metric was simply displayed, with no further action taken, then I might agree with pg's statement. Funnily enough, I found myself instinctively hunting for a downvote button (even though I don't have downvote powers yet) to mark my disagreement with pg's assertion. That behavior seems to be deeply embedded in many of us, even if we intellectually hold to the opposing view.