> If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame.

I'll agree that generally it would be better for the community to explain the disagreement if nobody else has done it already, but we're allowed to be lazy if we want (and if it isn't in a way that actively worsens the site), or to just be too busy and needing to move on rather than dive into writing a potentially long comment. And in either of those cases, you could choose to therefore not downvote since you're not going to comment, but surely giving the downvote is still contributing slightly in a helpful way by sending the "a person disagrees" signal to HN's comment sorting algo, so I think it's fine to do that as a lazy option even though not as good as taking the non-lazy route!

I wish more people could view points/karma as simple a useful tool for the website, not a metric of personal achievement. Especially as it's such a shit metric for personal achievement - I've earned 124 points (so far) just for submitting this article, which took me 30 seconds and no skill at all. While I've written comments that I felt were useful, intelligent, and not quick to write that only got a single upvote because it was just helpful to one person. Who cares?

I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to say "that makes it pretty clear why this site has pretty much evolved" about a policy that has been the same since the site launched 15+ years ago.

And also that the HN Guidelines even explicitly say "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." with each of the words in the second sentence linking to old comments making the same claims dating back as far as 2009." (though personally I do think it's getting worse... but I've no idea if that's real or just from the angle I'm looking at it from.)

But of course you're free to leave if you don't like the site any more, or you could email the mods and lobby them to change the guidelines in some way, or you could try setting a good example to others by only posting substantial and interesting comments etc. Plenty of options :)