Save myself from people proving my point? Why?

The HN guidelines specifically ask not to express the expectation of downvotes. You may be downvoted purely for ignoring the guidelines, regardless of the rest of your comment.

Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A generally reasonable guideline, but in this case, I am actually criticizing the tribalism that makes people rise to that bait.

It similarly leads to the discussion of how "I can't believe Linus is trying to defend SHA-1 when The Tribe already knows it is cryptographically 'bad'."

If you are taking the view that you're expecting downvotes to prove the point that people who are trying to uphold community standards are doing so blindly or ignorantly, you'll very likely think you're proven correct when you do receive downvotes. Can you blame them? You're explicitly flaunting the guidelines they choose to abide by while telling them they're wrong to do so in your special case.

ahem... "flouting"

You're right, of course. Thanks!