Honestly I don't care about downvotes if I can at least downvote as well. When I've been on this site for months and made hundreds of killer comments, and the only reason I can't downvote yet is because I don't match the hive mind enough, it really pisses me off. Also, this creates an erroneous impression of which comments are good and which aren't. I reckon most users here have under 500 points or whatever and thus cannot downvote. If I had never been downvoted I'd probably have another thousand points on top of what I already have.

In my own experience, I think I am not "match[ing] the hive mind", nor do I try to, and as such my karma growth is slow but not painfully so. I think that I've been treated more or less fairly.

I think your downvotes mainly come on some of your political comments. Political threads are not great to begin with, and I think you're giving yourself some undue credit as to your participation to them. I commonly hear that HN leans liberal and whatnot, and that's probably true, but I wouldn't say that non-liberal (for severe lack of a better term) comments are necessarily dogpiled. I think many non-liberal comments that are downvoted here are done so for being in bad faith, because they may have a point but overextend their argument to other targets. I make it a point to not take sides and be critical of all opinions (of course I don't implement it perfectly), and I think I have been treated more or less fairly. I linked some political threads I participated in to demonstrate non-downvoted non-liberal comments. If some of my opinions are "liberal" and others are "conservative", I'll just say that I try to be fair and reasonable.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36523600
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36653284
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573777

I only downvote people who I think are degrading the conversation who seem outlandishly wrong or off-topic. If I just disagree with someone, I may reply or not. It's reasonable to disagree on the basis of holding different values or beliefs.

PG's old essay "Keep your identity small", should be required reading.

https://paulgraham.com/identity.html

Haven't read that before, but nicely read. I've had related thoughts on this, and I agree. I like the quote "keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out". Alternatively, change always comes, so be adaptable to change and face it head on. It's not clear how to divorce what I like from my identity, because I'm not a perfect automaton, but I try to minimize its influence and appreciate that we're all the same, standing in different places.

One person's "outlandishly wrong" is another's "boringly obvious" opinion.

>I think many non-liberal comments that are downvoted here are done so for being in bad faith, because they may have a point but overextend their argument to other targets.

Liberal comments are often in bad faith. The top/only political posts that get upvoted are entire bad-faith liberal propaganda hit pieces. The liberal commenters find a way to wedge politics into anything remotely political, spewing Trump Derangement Syndrome or climate hysteria narratives. These comments get upvoted. Trying to talk sense into these people gets consistently downvoted unless you're willing to do a lot of waffling and phrase your objection in the most milquetoast way you can think of.

>I commonly hear that HN leans liberal and whatnot, and that's probably true, but I wouldn't say that non-liberal (for severe lack of a better term) comments are necessarily dogpiled.

The audience (that comments, anyway) is mostly a liberal hivemind. There is a lot of dog-piling here. You shouldn't be downvoted for simply disagreeing or presenting a reductio ad absurdum argument but it happens here all the time. It's not as bad as Reddit but still not so good. The rate limit sucks too because you can be spammed by like 5 people and not be able to respond to them quick enough.

I might do better if I pretended to be more on the fence than I am, but I am very opinionated. Some of these comments I respond to are SO stupid that I think shock therapy is the appropriate approach. I try not to be personal. I just point out the absurdity of what they are saying and hope they just snap out of it or say something interesting to prove me wrong.

Based on that last paragraph, I think it's pretty likely you're getting downvoted for your attitude and not for your opinions.

That's actually pretty consistent with a lot of the other comments I see where the author claims their opinion is being downvoted when they're actually just being a jerk.

> and hope they just snap out of it

Is this something you do a lot? Someone talks down to you online and you go "huh! They're right!" and change your mind?

I'm definitely getting downvoted primarily for my opinions and disagreement. I don't know if you've noticed but people really hate being proven wrong or challenged on their opinions. The default is they treat you like a jerk unless you kiss enough ass, and even then they probably still hate it. If I waffle around and get carpal tunnel from typing out overly polite replies to absurd takes, I might avoid some of the downvotes. But there's no pleasing these people. I wouldn't care so much if not for the hive mind effect, where people like me can't downvote anyone no matter how rude or wrong they are. It creates an illusion of consensus, and reinforces bad ideas.

Honestly don't know what this has to do with my comment.

Edit: I guess the topic is downvotes, sure, but I feel like your comment would be better made somewhere further up the comment chain where it's actually relevant.

If I don't care about them (except for the indignity of getting downvoted by people I can't downvote) that implies I wouldn't get into a debate about the cause of the downvote. I might have intended to reply to a different comment at this level though, actually...