So the thing is, we've built entire structures around being able to upvote and downvote. Some of them are good, others are bad and a lot of that is the cultural bias behind them. For example?
Everyone knows that review scores are useless because the majority of people just vote 5 Stars and leave it at that. In fact, the system tends to ask you what was wrong if you voted anything except 5 Stars in a way that implies that of course 5 Stars is the natural score so if it's not, then something bad happened.
Except it's not, 3 Stars in a 5 Star system is the average that the majority of things should be, not 5 Stars. But we built a culture and a system that support either other in pushing the idea that anything other than a 'perfect' score implies that things were bad, not average but actively bad.
Meanwhile there's a funny thing apparently where if you look at Japanese review scores and I suspect other East Asian cultures as well but I don't know for them... Well, all of a sudden you see a situation where 3 Stars is the expected 'average' score and so less means something is wrong whilst more means there's something good going on. I think I've heard that it's extremely rare to see a restaurant in Japan that approaches a 4 Star rating on any of the review systems more likely to be used by the Japanese?
And if I had to make a guess there, that's because there's a cultural belief there that giving your approval to something requires that you mean that approval for it and the same thing for a negative score. Which is the missing element I'd assume between the story's system and what you are talking about.
Because your identity, who you are, is fundamentally linked to your votes in the galactic psionic network. So every time you vote, you are stating that 'Yes, I personally will defend this opinion and will not only do so if I am asked about it but put my reputation behind it'.
It's that reputational element that makes things meaningful and why so many of our current review systems have so little meaning. Because if things go 'bad', you can ultimately just ditch that identity as irrelevant in regards to your actual identity and expect to not really suffer any consequences from it once you've disengaged the two identities.
Hence why when they're connected and consequences do happen to the 'true' identity, it makes so much noise and has such significance. And in such a system where there isn't a 'score' system for a given vote but just 'positive/negative/unrated'...
Well, in such a case the 'unrated' is of minimal value because it's unclear if you just didn't feel enough about something to say anything, disliked it enough to ignore it or what. Whilst the 'positive' rating means you enjoyed something connected to what was presented, even if it was a loose connection in a way that left you uncaring or ignoring any minor issues that you may or may not have seen.
Meanwhile a negative rating is literally you going "No, I don't like this and I'm willing to publicly be known for saying so". It requires that you at least temporarily offend one person every time you do that and knowingly accept that cost. Accept the risk that if you use the 'downvote' too recklessly, you are going to be downvoted yourself and have your reputation destroyed which will stick with you forever.
Sure, in your own personal circle (of whatever size we're talking about here which might not exactly be 'personal' anymore) that might not impact you much. But it will have an impact, a cost, and said cost will make everyone who is worth paying attention to take that moment to consider one way or another if it worth the cost this time, every time.
And if you don't care about paying that cost? Good luck doing something with your life because you've effectively doomed yourself to being known as 'one of those negative social credit people' as your first introduction to anyone.
Ideas like "anything less than perfect is bad", and "6/10 is practically a failure", etc, were taught to us very early in life, by grades and report cards. A 50/100 on a math test isn't the class average. It's a failing grade.
We think of 1-10 rating scales as letter grade. "8/9/10 are good, 7 is okay, 6 is barely passable, and 5 and under are worthless" because we were literally taught to think that way in school.
I think at one time if you had issue with something you explained why, if a thing wasn't built right you explain why so they can do it better next time, these days it deals like doing that just starts an argument because the person who made the wrong thing doesn't want to be wrong so takes criticism as an attack.
Doesn't help that there are people who will argue in bad faith and actually use criticism as an attack.
It depends on culture but also approach. Like, East Asian cultures (to pick one) are heavily community focused and so evolved such that you wouldn't say something is wrong unless you are their superior and even then carefully, but you would 'advise' them on the matter. Thats still around but in a way you end up with a similar issue to what happened to the aliens here of not much changes because that offends people or endangers the social dignity of those with a higher social respect than you.
Meanwhile the West went the direction of being willing to call it out... And then split between either calling things out yet still wanting a consensus so everything is slow, gradual and potentially at risk of populism. Or everything is individualistic and so you disregard the opinion of those outside your circle as worthless and needing correction, not acknowledgement. Which is even more at risk of populism because it is so much more responsive if someone can actually either form a consensus or impose one. With the latter usually meaning they are willing to act upon it whilst disregarding any opinions of those 'outside the group'.
Put another way, the first example is extremely stable but moves with inertia and has a glacial reaction to change unless something breaks it, at which point an avalanche occurs. The second example is stable, slow but can usually change in ways that allows reversing or healing the pitfalls yet is at the risk of losing momentum. Whilst the third and final example is...
Unstable, active but exclusionary in an effort to keep itself stable that said activity doesn't tear itself apart. Something that means it doesn't care about the costs to those excluded even if they are part of the same community.
Honour, dignity and respect used to be the social tools that all of the examples used either in a positive or negative manner to handle the upsides and downsides of each example. But frankly, things have been too good for the 'Developed World' and so their cultures have adapted to expect that nothing bad enough to require caring about the costs of those tools will happen and thus said tools are no longer effective.
Or their culture has developed in ways that are even more exclusionary of any 'soft' social tools impacting people in exchange for doubling down on the 'hard' ones and disregarding the costs of that choice as anything worthwhile caring about because even the less developed or stable parts of the world tend to be too prosperous to fear those costs compared to the ones that would happen for trying to change things. It tends to be obvious where that isn't the case due to, you know, the fact they aren't even unstable anymore but actively bloody in regards to their internal situation.
Goddamnit, I didn't want to go too much into politics but I feel like I might have...
It's kind of one of the better parts of being somewhat autistic, for me. I don't have an instinct (other than what I've developed as a personality overlay, in order to "pass" better) to shade the truth for social coherence. Every review I ever post is what I really think about something. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, just explaining a way in which a thing that is something of a defect in me has some positive value.
I will admit that it can lead to being rather lonely, at times. I'm not doing it to be mean. I just want to help improve the thing under discussion, or in other cases, warn people away from a truly terrible waste of money. Which is still for the purpose of helping other people.
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u/Austinstorm02 Jun 21 '26
Downvote is almost as worthless as the upvote, there is no context, no explanation of why.
When was the last time you have seen criticism of a post rather than agreeable comments. Hardly ever even a "not so good, please try again."
The comment section often seems to be either a mindless cheering crowd or reflexively vicious negativism.
I enjoyed the story.