Anyway, I started editing my posts to make them clearer or correct facts or add supporting details when those things would make them better. Then I started deleting my posts when they flat out sucked. And then I got better at realizing a was going to suck as I was writing it and so I got in the habit of putting down the shovel when my writing was digging a hole and letting it go.
While I was learning all this I still visited parts of the internet where being an asshole is not only accepted, but often a high form of enterainment, i.e. I just wasn't an asshole on Hacker News. Anyway, as I came to believe [perhaps mistakenly] that my writing was improving, I found that writing to tell people that they are wrong on the internet [see xkcd386] less pleasurable than writing readers actually like to read.
It's "karma" and HN's karma system tends over time to disincentivize bad behavior in the context of HN. Explicitly seeking confrontation, is probably to a first approximation one of those.
[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...
I must say, however, that it seems to me that this is less true than it was a year ago. It's still mostly true, but it feels to me like we're starting to lose some of what makes HN such a worthwhile place.
If it's the former, 15 points is a pretty low bar to meet (and I say this as someone who has posted their share of heterodox opinions, and outright shitposts). If it's the latter, aren't you being a little hypocritical in wanting those, given that you posted this thread?