We're not going to do that because it would lead to an explosion of bickering, nitpicking, and other low-value comments. You can't force people to do things like give good reasons.
The downvote system has its disadvantages to be sure, but HN would be far, far worse off without it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is underestimating the need for anti-dreck measures on the internet.
The key word in what you wrote is 'seeing'. You notice the cases you dislike, but the other ones in some sense go unseen:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... In other words you count the cost of the system but not its benefits. I don't mean you personally! we all do this. It's a cognitive bias that strongly (I mean extremely strongly) affects people's perceptions of HN.
In reality, the ability of this site to support your intention ("I come here primarily to read discussion and to provide my unfiltered critical thought") depends utterly on the downvotes, just as the body depends on its white blood cells.
100% agree that human confirmation bias is VERY strong and impacts HN. This is partially the reason why I'm so concerned with (human) moderators having the ability to impact visibility of stories/comments[1].
Also, definitely agree that HN would be worse off without downvotes. I just think the system badly needs improvement. Below is a previous related comment of mine:
I think "downvoting for disagreement" generally works on discussion related to non-sensitive topics, but starts to break down once discussion enters the political realm. It turns into a numbers game. Since the dev community tends to lean to the left, the "downvote" numbers are skewed in that direction. It leads to non-left users getting frustrated and possibly no longer visiting the site (including myself), creating an echo chamber and eroding the overall quality of HN.
Why not set a max of 3 downvotes a day? Or subtract 5 karma points IF you don't include a reply with your downvote? There's gotta be a way to improve this.
The downvote system has its disadvantages to be sure, but HN would be far, far worse off without it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is underestimating the need for anti-dreck measures on the internet.
The key word in what you wrote is 'seeing'. You notice the cases you dislike, but the other ones in some sense go unseen: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... In other words you count the cost of the system but not its benefits. I don't mean you personally! we all do this. It's a cognitive bias that strongly (I mean extremely strongly) affects people's perceptions of HN.
In reality, the ability of this site to support your intention ("I come here primarily to read discussion and to provide my unfiltered critical thought") depends utterly on the downvotes, just as the body depends on its white blood cells.