[trimethylpurine]

It's a great perspective. In fact I upvoted your comment just now.

By contrast, it also prevents users from commenting. See dang's posts on this.

Regardless, it's interesting to note that it also, indirectly, highlights interesting comments.

Do you also find that interesting?

[brudgers]

Typically, if a comment has been downvoted, I use it as a reason to filter it out. There’s more comments than I am going to read so reducing the pool is useful to me…and I don’t identify as a contrarian.

Thinking about it, downvoting for disagreement is the analog of upvoting for agreement.

[trimethylpurine]

I don't think being contrarian is a requirement for seeing value in comments that others disagree with. Just on this thread, your comment was downvoted but represents a particular way of solving a problem that differs from the downvoter's. Even if that way is not better, for them, I think acknowledging that it might be better for someone else is objectively open minded, and not in the least contrarian.

But my point isn't to criticize anyone for downvoting. Just the opposite. It's to illustrate that thinking outside the box is in itself disagreeable, which, as is the case here, can be a searchable metric.

[brudgers]

I can see why your approach is useful for you and probably for other people. I just don’t seek out gray comments (though sometimes I do read some) because I am ok with missing interesting viewpoints. HN does fine despite my behaviors.

I am not contrarian in the sense that I think good comments are downvoted to a meaningful extent. YMMV.