But I always always downvote complaints about downvotes, such as your edit.
I downvote quite rarely in HN over disagreeing with someone. Usually it is when I don't feel the reply adds any value, and is actually negative for the discourse.
That is, e.g doesn't reach me anything about the opposing position, or is argumentative without any substance, but distracting from comments that are more constructive.
Of course other people use different judgement. At the same time, HN doesn't hide comments to a great extent. Even 'dead' comments are optionally visible (with the 'showdead' setting) and quite a few of us read HN with that on. It's very rare for downvotes to silence people here who aren't actively disruptive.
Couple that with first enabling downvotes when people hit a certain karma threshold, and various other limitations, and HN is free of a lot of the downvote problems of other places.
That to me makes it less of an issue if people downvote to signal disapproval here.
Often initial downvotes will be countered when people feel a comment has been downvotes too much as well.