Basically, if you're being an asshole, I don't feel a need to save you from yourself.
There aren't many (if any) formal guidelines for comment voting on HN, so this is me driving at what I want out of the community. I don't speak for everyone. For my part, I want civility, and to encourage people to contribute their opinions, popular or not.
The polite responses to misinformed ideas are often some of the most educational, at least for me, and so I'd like an environment where anxiety about the chance of being wrong is low for everyone.
I also don't want any of this to sound like an indictment of hacker news. I keep coming back here because I think the community is really top notch, and the signal to noise ratio is high. Commenting systems and forums have had these problems for ages, and they're hard problems. I just wanted to add my voice to the crowd.
I think you're too concerned about what strangers think and do around the internet. Most people will "bomb" your subjective side of the argument (the snarky, mean, remarks), and not the underlying idea. I've found out that conveying your arguments while avoiding personal, subjective, attacks is a much better way of getting your point across, since people are more receptive if they don't get the impression they need to be defensive.