Thank you for the info. I'll stop doing that.

It's a pretty transparent attempt at reverse psychology, and a form of vote-begging.

Intstead try, "I hope I don't offend anyone by saying this, but..."

> It's a pretty transparent attempt at reverse psychology

It reminds me of slashdot. I recall seeing countless "+5 Insightful" posts that began with: "I'm sure I'll be downvoted for this ...".

I can see how it's perceived that way. Fwiw, that was my frustration of down votes for unpopular, well meaning, statements.

Thank you for the communication & attitude tip. I'll adopt it.

Except - your statements might be well meaning, but they are a) inflammatory b) poorly formulated and c) not backed by any kind of evidence. You keep referring to programming, but the equivalent of your argument is "oh well, Big data will win because my cousin frank used a spreadsheet to make a million bucks"

a: It's only inflammatory because there's a strong bias

b: It's only "poorly formulated" because the prevailing opinion isn't critical of western medicine

c: Discussions of conjecture are allowed. At this point, the causes cancer is conjecture, as the isolated causes have been elusive despite the billions poured into research

How do you fit the BRCA genes into your anti reductionist framework?

They are, at a minimum, highly specific predictors.

Never discuss downvoting in the comments. Do not complain about them. Do not anticipate them. Do not ask for them. Anyone who says anything often enough will suffer downvotes at some point. If you can't figure out why, then ignore it.

Last two paragraphs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There are exceptions, like a legitimate meta-discussion about the karma system, but those should be vanishingly rare.