Since 48% of us effectively threw away our votes, I reckon we should have a re-vote with just the 2 options.

Interesting turn of events, every time I like someones post by adding a (Y) it adds to my own number instead of theirs.

On second thought, I don't mind the change, and it might even be an improvement, because I still have a higher number than others, which means I'm better than them.

Oh, gotcha. I was gonna say, damn, I got popular.

Only aspects of it are. Forums and other forms of dialogue are naturally social, but introspection and unshared thoughts are not. Both can count as doing philosophy. — Sapientia

A distinctly modern notion. The ancient philosophers would have argued that philosophy simply cannot be done in isolation and without cross-examination. It was the image of Descartes shut up in his room that started the trend towards believing that philosophy could be done alone. But even then there were letters containing objections and encouragements traded back and forth before any of his works were completed. — Postmodern Beatnik

Sure. My statement was very ambiguous. What I was getting at is that philosophy hacks away at the foundations of our world view in a rather inconsiderate way. It has no concern for what we feel or want, and can destroy our self-image. Doing this kind of thing in the company of others can be very anti-social in that it causes discord and distress. But that's philosophy, it's hard and nasty. To ease this we should be polite and considerate. But I think having likes and other social pokings is a distraction from the business of philosophy, which has precisely no regard for such things. If we were not such social creatures likes and dislikes would be of little interest, but being what we are we tend to first pay attention to how much rep someone has got before we read what they have to say, or we skim down the page of posts to first look at the ones with the most likes or dislikes, to see what has affected people the most. Maybe that's a good thing, but it's not philosophy. I understand that forums are also about building social relationships. But that can happen anyway without likes and dislikes.