Agreed, people seem to be downvoting because they hope he/she's wrong rather than to post a reply explaining their reasoning. I see nothing wrong with the root comment and just upvoted it to give it more attention.

Give it an hour or so. the hivemind is usually strong in the beginning.

Well, we all know that now but not for the first comment.

Should be

Down votes = troll or argumentative or factually wrong

Actually

Down votes = I disagree

I have quit HN many times over that but there isn't anything that can replace HN right now.

I agree with you that the down voting is silly, as s/he makes some good points, but suspect the down voting was in reaction to the tone of the comment. If one was holding a lab meeting and a comment arose in that tone, one could image other lab member getting defensive. tl;dr The comment would have been more effective without the passion of fail'hard' and other language.