I wouldn't say I'm disturbed. But I am confused.

It is an overbroad criticism of the "Would someone have noticed?" heuristic which, as Tehom and timtyler point out, is actually very useful.

I took myself to be making the same kind of point here though in a bit of a round-a-bout and indirect way. All of these criticisms were heavily voted up, as well. I wonder if front page posts have a de facto karma floor in the high twenties just because they get more traffic than posts that aren't promoted. Aside from the occasional work of brilliance and the special threads almost every promoted post has a karma total between 25 and 33. I think the promotion system probably needs more scrutiny or at least we need a way of distinguishing "Promoted for discussion purposes" and "Promoted for truth".