I think this is an artifact of HN's voting system. Most readers probably don't have enough karma to even downvote. For the ones that do, guideline discourage do

I think this is an artifact of HN's voting system. Most readers probably don't have enough karma to even downvote. For the ones that do, guideline discourage downvoting for comments that you disagree with. And I can see why the majority of HN readers would upvote the top level comment. Particularly since it's a popular re-hashed opinion. Top comments aren't a good survey of the opinions of a specific community for that reason.