You are correct. I thought the guidelines encouraged discussion instead of down voting but...upon looking at the guidelines, I was wrong. Also, I don't mind the down votes, all I did was ask others to discuss more instead of clicking a simple down vote link. Many can down vote but how many can have a conversation?
Btw, the HN rules ask you not to complain about downvotes in comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.