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The purpose of the site is to gratify one's intellectual curiosity. The reward/penalty system is a byproduct of that goal.

i don't know exactly how this site works, and i'm not going to research it

Then please try not to click on anything you are unsure of while you are visiting, you might unleash the killer robots and the insurance on them is atrocious.

On this site, people often down vote things they disagree with, without regard to whether they contribute to the conversation.

I think this is a problem endemic to the internet.

Voting was created to combat spam, originally, but unfortunately often can effectively become censorship by democracy.

That's actually an accepted use of vote-down on this site.

Well that explains why it is such a worthless anti-intellectual circle jerk.