I subvocalize. Can't turn it off.

I can change the voice, though. Some phrases are hard to not read in someone else's voice, like I tend to want to hear Feynman when I see "interesting" because I really like the way he says it.

I'm sorry that you didn't like my comment.

My intention was to get a point across. I thought that anyone who read my comment, didn't find its meaning clear, and was interested enough that they'd have bothered to read a longer and more explicit one would probably also be willing to read the thing I linked to, and that they might find it interesting if they did.

(Being terse plainly hasn't, in fact, decreased the amount of effort I've had to expend.)

Doesn't seem crazy. I'd have to give it more thought before deciding whether it's likely to be an improvement. (Not that it particularly matters whether I think it's likely to be an improvement!)

But mass-downvoting would still be an abuse of the system and make karma less informative. Better to make it go away, if possible, either by preventing it or by disincentivizing it.

[EDITED to add: I mean "and make the scores of posts and comments less informative".]

I certainly don't assume that any particular reader has read all the sequences (nor that they should). I don't think it's so unreasonable to suggest reading one particular not-so-long post -- whose title might give the game away to a sufficiently quick-witted reader without even needing to follow the link.

Downvotes (plus a mechanism for making heavily-downvoted things less prominent, which LW has) provide protection against spammers and trolls.

Downvotes provide a non-cluttering way of indicating when a particular kind of comment (e.g., low-value template-y attempts at humour, which if not discouraged are apt to start taking over everything) are not appreciated by the community.

Downvotes provide a signal to people who simply aren't able or willing to make a positive contribution that they might do better to go elsewhere. Perhaps this last one is some of the motivation behind some or all mass-downvoting, but what evidence I have suggests that it's often done to people whose contribution is obviously positive to anyone who isn't so politicized that they see the mere presence of someone who thinks differently from them as a threat.

Having to read the "majority of the sequences" is still an extreme distortion. It's enough to have a look at the (single) linked post.

"Society" doesn't make decisions, groups of people make decisions. If every individual in the group understands how to avoid natural pitfalls, how to coordinate decisionmaking processes, how to take on board information from viewpoints which conflict with their own and incorporate what's useful rather than throwing it out wholecloth, etc, then the collective decisionmaking ability of the group is improved.

Your project could benefit from increased obedience as you could just lead rationally and the others would follow. Disagreements between rational people can take a longer time to resolve, etc

The projects I participated in could have benefited from increased group obedience, if everyone simply followed my lead, but if the members lacked the reasoning ability to distinguish between competent leaders, how would they know who to trust to lead them?

In my experience, disagreements between genuinely rational people overwhelmingly do not take a longer time to resolve. One of the basic components of rationality is knowing how to take new information on board and actually change your mind. Disagreements between irrational people tend to be far more intractable.

Please don't assume that every reader has read all the sequences or has the time to do so just to understand your comment.

A particular post was linked. The implied requirement of having to "read all the sequences" is an extreme distortion of the issue that makes your remark seem more relevant.

I don't think it's true at all that there's no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.

If I'm working on a project with a group of irrational people, the other members will tend to make mistakes of judgment which I'm simply too many steps of inference removed from them to realistically explain. So I give up, and the project suffers.

If I'm working on a project with a group of highly rational people, those problems can be avoided without even needing to be discussed, saving energy for higher level problems.

Groups are made up of individuals. If every individual in a group recognizes the problems which will attend a course of action, that group is much more likely to avoid those problems than a group where nobody recognizes them.