Downvoting (if not crippled) already introduces the necessary non-linearity in my view. It functions as a form of consensus-finding much like superlinear, without the flaw that larger stakeholders (and/or larger groups of stakeholders) can collude to take more than their fair share. It does exactly what you say in terms of e.g. bidbots because bidbot posts that attract downvotes would lose a share of their rewards and NOT receive a linear payout.

It is much less subject to abuse (including by bidbot-like schemes, which could easily gain under superlinear) because you can only push rewards non-lienarly _away_ from non-consensus payouts, but can't push them _toward_ yourself (directly or indirectly). 

I feel downvoting is just a better solution to this exact problem, but if it is given a serious try and doesn't work then I'd be more open to reconsidering superlinear. Though, still, I'm skeptical it would just introduce/reintroduce more problems. Perhaps a bit more superlinearity at the low end (to prevent dust farming) that transitions to linear as the rewards become significant would be okay.

> I think for projects that truly require a linear token, that's the perfect place for SMTs.

I'd actually say the opposite. Superlinearity with stake weighting will always be perceived as unfair (and for good reason in my view). In the case of SMTs with uniform voting, superlinearity could be a better fit (though I still expect would be abused). Likewise SMTs might serve some subcommunity where the cultural context makes the lack of 'fairness' not a problem or even an advantage (pure speculation here).

>"Variation in reward for any given sp weighted vote is crucial to making it more difficult to mindlessly price votes for bid bots, favor good curation more, and generally helps content reflective voting behavior to out-compete content indifferent behavior."

This is absolutely true, but this only regards economic incentives.

I note that our interests aren't merely economic, and neglecting other metrics precludes competence at effecting other rewards that are more valuable than money.

I keep hammering on this point because I am confident that only by considering those more valuable aspects of society can we resolve economic imbalances caused by only considering economic factors.  Finance is integral to society, but it is not the only metric that matters.  Failing to use other metrics forces economic metrics to primacy, and thus profiteering is unavoidable, as when only economic metrics are considered, only financial profit matters.

I note that problems sought to be resolved involve non-economic factors, and those factors must be valued and rewarded to rationally address those issues.  Effecting non-financial rewards is necessary to achieve non-financial goals.  There are other valuable considerations, such as friendship, content quality, and societal felicity, that are necessarily exchanged in social interactions.  Proposing only economic functions as solutions precludes successfully aligning the economic aspect of social media with the actual value of society.

>At the heart of what favors content indifferent voting in terms of profit maximization is that vote/sp is identical (roughly speaking) irrespective of where it's cast. 

We need to get out of the pure "dollar term reasoning", think outside the box, bring in a second dimension, a second yardstick, that is what makes us human and not cold calculating machines

We need to come together and create communities around shared values. A set of shared values inspire human behaviour even in the absence of economic incentives (see religion and ideologies). 

We need to start a series of thriving, vibrant steemit "passions" as there are already examples around "open source software" (@utopian-io) or "science" (@steemstem)

Mini societies that curate based not on the financial reward but on their own internal, subjective value system