It may not surprise you to know that I fundamentally disagree with downvoting in general- I feel like there a difference between signaling "this is low quality content" and "I disagree with your point".
In HN there's no way to make that distinction, so if you want to express a viewpoint that's unpopular (which we should encourage in debate) you have to be willing to pay a karma penalty.
I get it. I'm not particularly fond of lots of ideologies. But I don't have tools here to differentiate between, "I disagree" and "Your comment is structurally bad (rude/breaks the rules/is low effort/etc."
I think we'd both benefit from breaking the coupling between those two reasons to downvote. (And yes, I'm aware that downvoting because you disagree is against the rules, but I don't think that stops anyone. :D )
And in fact, an early post says the opposite -- downvoting because you disagree is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
I downvoted you, and I consider your question here hyperbolic. I don't think you are being disingenuous, I believe that you sincerely hold your belief, I just view your concerns as a modern day Chicken Little claiming the sky is falling. I've looked at the same set of data and come to different conclusions than you.
I don't think we'll see eye to eye, and I don't think it's likely we'll convince each other of anything, so I don't know how worthwhile this comment even is, but I thought I'd pass it along as a "Here's one reason why people might be downvoting you and here's how you are being perceived."
Maybe that's not valuable, maybe you already know that's why people are downvoting. I dunno, it just felt like you were accusing your downvoters of not being rational actors, and I suspect your downvoters look at you the same way?