as already mentioned I think comments (real comments though) is really the sign of appreciation for the authors work. I usually upvote the posts I comment on as I think most people do.
I use steemvoter myself for a couple of days now and I am not sure what to think about it. It saves me time, it upvotes authors I think are good and make quality posts every time and of course it auto curates for me.
On the other hand it makes me engage in their content less then before.
In my first week on steemit I did some follow4follow and upvote4upvote stuff and I did not enjoy my steemit experience at all. My feed was full of stuff I was not interested in.
As I stopped doing that and hunt for good content it started to be fun and even educational.
The auto voting seems to have a similar effect.
Most people can feel the wrongness of things, either by thinking beforehand and they can know it without doing it, or they need to do it in order to know it. I didn't need to do autovoting to know it's bad for the intention of social media and evaluating content, nor did I need to do follow4follow or vote4vote when I got here. I already knew they were not optimal behavioral models, and I didn't need to do it. I wanted to mention that because of your previous comment int he other post ;) You don't need to do and experience things to really know if they are optimal, better or right to do. That's a fallacy. Consciousness is powerful, we can avoid doing things because we have the foresight and providence to see what it will do, without doing it.
I disagree to a certain point here. Yes you are right I knew beforehand I did upvote 4 upvote or follow 4 follow this was not really the way, my greed got the better of me.
The emotional and intellectual understanding/ intelligence I have learned about on a Vipassana retreat. I mgiht used it wrong or a bad example. They used it as an example for the meditation. On an intellectual level you might understand meditation is good for you on an emotinal level you have to learn it since meditating for 12 hours a day doesnt feel very good at first.
But it was the first thing which came to my mind when I read your article.