[sokoloff]

Edit: I took a quick look at this at it's even easier than that. You can do it with just stylus/Stylish.

  @-moz-document domain("news.ycombinator.com") {
  [title=downvote] {
      display: none
  }
  }

As a personal experiment, I'm going to leave this enabled for myself and see how long before I find the urge to downvote some comment. :D

Original: You could hide the button with TamperMonkey pretty easily (send an email if you genuinely want to, looked at it, and couldn’t figure it out, and I’ll try to help)

Then, the “only after reflection” I’d implement by forcing myself to use another browser or toggling the element title or the extension. I don’t downvote very often (probably 20:1 up to down vote ratio), but I do know that some of mine are still lizard brain.

[LinuxBender]

I found a way here on HN to use uBlock to set Dark Mode and undo the downvote colors. I don't remember who suggested the Dark Mode. This is from "My Filters"

  ycombinator.com##html:style(background-color: #3e3e42 !important)
  ycombinator.com###hnmain:style(background-color: #2E2E31 !important)
  ycombinator.com##.age:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.c00:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.c5a:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.c73:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.c82:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.c88:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.c9c:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.cae:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.cbe:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.cce:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.cdd:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.comhead > a:style(color: #dedede !important)
  ycombinator.com##.comhead:style(color: #dedede !important)
  ycombinator.com##.hnuser:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.subtext > a:link:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.subtext > a:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.subtext:style(color: #ccc !important)
  ycombinator.com##.title > a:style(color: #dedede !important)
  ycombinator.com##a:link:style(color: #ccc !important)

The .c00 is the default text and the .c5a through .cdd are the 9 shades of gray.

[DyslexicAtheist]

thanks I will try your style receipt. it's fascinating to see how these things effects one emotionally.