The other day, someone did something I didn't expect. It was something many people have done before; something that I thought of as very normal, but that I in no way understood and had not predicted.
As I said, this had happened many time before, so I wrote it off as "me not understanding people" or "people are weird" for a second, like I usually do, before realizing that "bad at" really means "lacking basic knowledge", which I had never realized before.
And then I thought "I should ask someone who is different from me why people do that, and eventually someone will have an answer."
But many people will have many more questions like this. So, what have you observed people doing time and time again, but never understood? Or something that you only understood after a long time or asking someone about it?
And can Less Wrong tell us, not necessarily why (I for one can make up evolutionary psychology fairy tales all day if I want) but what conscious thought process occurs behind these events?
But then, why don't people downvote more often? Especially if downvoting is completely anonymous and requires minimum effort?
One guess is that downvoting is too simple; it does not pattern-match to a personal attack, therefore it does not bring the related emotions.
Other guess is "in group / out group" distinction, where people on the same site are percieved as members of the same subgroup, and you don't want to make your subgroup weaker. But then why does the same effect not stop trolling? Do trolls percieve themselves as members of a dominant subgroup inside the weaker subgroup, showing them who is really the boss? (The imaginary dominant subgroup = people who don't care about this website.)