If you look at my original comment, you'll see I used the example of a conversation with only two participants as an example. In this situation, you don't even

If you look at my original comment, you'll see I used the example of a conversation with only two participants as an example. In this situation, you don't even have the rough social proof of the comment order. Ordering is flawed even alone, because it has certain biases in comment age as well. I've seen new comments with no votes shown above other, very highly voted comments. I should mention that I'm not necessarily campaigning to bring back the vote counts, nor do I necessarily want them back (for reasons you describe well), but I do think they did have value, and we need a way to bring back that value while minimizing the bias. I'm not sure how to do that, but I do really like the "upvote, downvote, or abstain" concept mentioned in another comment on this submission, wherein the votes are hidden until you perform one of the listed actions. You can still view the votes, but you can't influence them after you know what they are.