I was thinking more like what you would see on Reddit, a lot of temporarily attractive/gratifying links that hold little long-term value. Great for attracting the masses and short-term traffic, but the exact reason people have been leaving this site in droves.

Also, a lot of people on Reddit blatantly talk about their intent to farm more karma with their posts.

Not that I have anything against reddit - I do frequent the site - but when I come to HN, the type of content I'm looking for is quite different than when I go to reddit.

And I think that's exactly the reason points shouldn't really be shown...