Random musing: What if karma was kept as a way to sort comments in each thread, and to maintain a threshold for the ability to downvote, but was concealed from

Random musing: What if karma was kept as a way to sort comments in each thread, and to maintain a threshold for the ability to downvote, but was concealed from the user? i.e. I can upvote or downvote someone, but not see the current score their comment has, or their overall karma, or my own. What happens then? Do we stop our subconscious trepidation over whether we will be downvoted and begin posting whatever pops into our heads, thereby improving HN, or do we begin posting a bunch of crap because karma no longer matters, thereby worsening HN?