I absolutely agree - and since it's impossible to know whether a top comment in a thread is there because it was just posted or because it has a lot of upvotes

I absolutely agree - and since it's impossible to know whether a top comment in a thread is there because it was just posted or because it has a lot of upvotes the sorting of the comments doesn't really give me any information. This begs the question: If I can't see the votes and have no easy way of knowing which comments are highly rated why have a voting system at all? What is the purpose if not to serve as a guideline for the users?