[read]

I'm starting to believe there's an odd property to curiosity. Unique observations are threatening to people's identity.

Those were two actual questions asked to Elon along with his responses, and the two that stood out for me the most. Did he mention showering because that's the time he gets most of his ideas[1]? Did he say no to politics because it's more likely to change the world through innovation[2]?

Result: 8 downvotes. It'd be enough if the comment was downvoted just once, to sink in the page. That happens to everyone. But seven other people found it imperative to make an authoritative statement on the matter. Impressive. Did that keep their identity safe? Pushing threatening ideas away isn't the best way to help rearrange the semantic tree in your mind.

Could there be an inverse correlation between being downvoted and having good ideas? It shouldn't be a surprising discovery on valuable ideas if you consider the nature of the most valuable startup ideas: look like bad ideas but are good ideas.

So if you want to know if your ideas are good, it's not enough to see them gain support. It's also important to see people turn against them.

I know HN guidelines discourage commenting on downvotes, because they make for boring reading, but I'm starting to think being downvoted is a positive sign of how dangerous your ideas are.

Are you being downvoted enough?

[1] http://paulgraham.com/top.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801803

edit: revised 80% of this after having a shower

[DanBC]

Your first post got downvotes because it is devoid of content. It just quotes, with no comment or context, two questions and answers.

I'm not sure how you get the idea that you're somehow provoking people with dangerous ideas.

[read]

Quotes are content, or at least a specific aggregation of them. The article's title is context.

What I found as a dangerous idea was pointing out things you notice when you are not sure why you notice them. Which is how the subconscious operates. Not everything that makes you pause should initially have an explanation. The majority of people's decisions occur without their awareness.

One thing I learned from this exercise was something I hadn't consciously noticed before. That I feel pressured on HN to comment. I don't like that. I want to do something about that.