Voting is a statistical cloud, meaning you can't relate to it deterministically. There are all sorts of weird outliers for reasons you (i.e. any of us) can't understand or even imagine, so you have to let go of trying to explain particular data points. When all else fails I just remind myself that misclicks happen.
This is a special case of what is in fact the biggest challenge on HN. If you try to interpret individual data points, given that so little information is available, you'll end up curve-fitting the worst picture from your own imagination. It is a sort of demonic connect-the-dots game where, given a few dots, we end up recreating our own shadow: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... It's we who are doing it, not the data, which is what makes it so frustrating: only we know where our own buttons are, so only we can push them so reliably, over and over. But since we don't know we're doing it, it feels like the other person is doing it, or the community is doing it, and that feeling is intensely convincing! It's crazy-making.
There are lots of statistical clouds like that on HN—the opinions of commenters are another. This is why users frequently post angry theories about how awful the commenters are, but the angry theories are all contradictory. Each user is recreating their own shadow from the data points they happen to notice and dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), and since we have different shadows, we end up with different theories.
You’re absolutely right. Thanks for the time and energy in writing this response. I’ve observed your interventions over time and they are all reasonable and needed.
This is a special case of what is in fact the biggest challenge on HN. If you try to interpret individual data points, given that so little information is available, you'll end up curve-fitting the worst picture from your own imagination. It is a sort of demonic connect-the-dots game where, given a few dots, we end up recreating our own shadow: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... It's we who are doing it, not the data, which is what makes it so frustrating: only we know where our own buttons are, so only we can push them so reliably, over and over. But since we don't know we're doing it, it feels like the other person is doing it, or the community is doing it, and that feeling is intensely convincing! It's crazy-making.
There are lots of statistical clouds like that on HN—the opinions of commenters are another. This is why users frequently post angry theories about how awful the commenters are, but the angry theories are all contradictory. Each user is recreating their own shadow from the data points they happen to notice and dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), and since we have different shadows, we end up with different theories.