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> Because I disagreed with the majority I typically get my karma down so low that my comments aren't showing or, last week, I was banned altogether.

This is just the nefarious nature of karma-based systems. It also applies here. I find reddit's shadow banning/shadow hiding especially offensive. (Just think for a moment how utterly disgusting it is that such a feature was intentionally designed, implemented, and is now maintained.)

Not downvoting legitimate (but unpopular) comments is protected by the various rule systems (reddiquette, HN guidelines), but of course rule adherence is (very) low (especially on reddit).

> I wish I wouldn't.

Me too. And here as well.

I've never had any trouble publishing in a more conversational style and have read plenty of papers that do the same. Of course, this varies by field and venue and format (journal vs. conference) and even reviewer and it's difficult to understand what the true constraints are and what the state of the publishing system is in this regard.

But I suspect that a lot of academic's feelings about it are informed by what others have told them and how they've been trained, rather than by what's actually permissible in the publishing system.

> If you write each paragraph and have an LLM make that paragraph more scientific, it is entirely your paper

"More scientific" is not some merely stylistic thing that faithfully preserves the original meaning of what you wrote. The precise details of each paragraph matters a lot in terms of what and how it communicates. The fact that these details do matter means that, according to my accounting, it is not entirely your paper.

Also, I find striving for "scientific" to be a pretty undesirable thing. Why should papers read like that? What is the benefit? The best papers (in terms of their writing and communication) are unpretentious and conversational. I'm pretty sure I'd prefer your "basic sentences", especially if they were wholly yours. (I understand that there are also external forces at play here as you mentioned.)

Internet vibes---basically making conclusions based on feelings you get from participating in online communities. (E.g., Europeans concluding that America is a medical wasteland where most people do not have reasonable access to care because they read some horror stories on Reddit.)

From my experience in both systems, I think some of the students of course would (the best students in Scandinavia are just as good as the best students anywhere else), but certainly not all of them. And the degree of grade inflation as well as the level of courses and course difficulty is not only highly variable by school but also by individual instances of courses, so it's pretty hard to make broad claims regardless.

I should also note I've taken courses in Europe where the failure rate was like 60%, but I've also taken courses where just about every student got (the equivalent of) an A. Easy grading occurs in Euroland as well. Or other phenomenona, like niche courses that tend to only attract talented, interested students.

P.S. The "common" in "common knowledge" is not some claim of accuracy/correctness and does not lend credence to your point---a lot of things that are common knowledge are false! (I bet most things that fall under that description are false to a degree, or at least in terms of each individuals' average understanding.)

P.P.S. Failure in the US system and the European systems are very different things. In most US schools, failing is permanently recorded on your transcript and cannot be erased. You also cannot retake an exam you've failed. You just get the one shot. So the cost of failure in the US is much higher than in Europe, where it's absolutely routine. The US system also samples students more often, with course grades consisting of many homeworks, multiple exams, etc---this gives an early signal to students doing poorly they need to get their shit together and also prevents students from falling behind. In Europe it's often just a single final exam, which may be a whole of 10-15 minutes if it's an oral exam, and you may be permitted to take the exam even if you haven't really been doing the work (often you need some perfunctory thing like 50% of the points from the homework to qualify). All these factors are also responsible for high European failure rates---it's definitely not just the Americans going easy.

This is not a good comparison.

All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable.

The students at Scandinavian universities are selected to a degree, but represent a far broader range of the distribution and correspondingly there's a broader range of exam results.

Of course, other things are at play here (there is grade inflation at Harvard, the schools obviously operate differently, student disposition is (very) different (e.g., Scandinavian students are far less likely to care a lot about their grades), etc) but students from Harvard would do well at your university in Sweden. Also, the level of the material at Harvard is likely higher.

This is my experience from attending an Ivy undergrad and then doing graduate school in Scandinavia. I actually left my MSc program in Scandinavia because I thought the level of the courses was too low. (I ultimately returned for the PhD---I found the profs and researchers in Scandinavia to be first class/excellent. Much better than I ever will be.)