Is it ok to upvote/downvote posts/comments if you think they have too little/much karma, if you wouldn't have voted if the karma had been different? Eg you see a comment that you think is *shrug* fine, but it's getting really piled-on, is it ok to upvote it?
Total karma attempts to combine two pieces of info into one number:
As Ben Pace said, the ideal number of upvotes it should have
How many people voted
As Thomas Kwa said, voting towards +1[1] karma nullifies people's votes, meaning the total sum stops reflecting how many people expressed their opinion.
The decision seems to be between (1) showing the ideal number of votes, or (2) preserving the number of people who voted in either direction.
When I see a ~3 sentence quick take with 70 karma vs. another one with 10 karma, I don't judge the first one as 7x more v... (read more)
I think directional voting is particularly justified because many people are the opposite - they are influenced by the existing karma and are more likely to upvote a comment that's already upvoted.
This is much more obvious on reddit mind you, lesswrong is definitely better about it.