Gotcha. I'll take your word for it, because I regard you as about as much a lay authority on HN posting as HN has. And if pg has weighed in on this topic, well,

Gotcha. I'll take your word for it, because I regard you as about as much a lay authority on HN posting as HN has. And if pg has weighed in on this topic, well, he's quite the authority, too. :) That being said, I still feel weird about downvoting to disagree. The way I see it, disagreement-downvoting creates noise in its own way. Less noise than unproductive or bad replies, certainly, but more noise than doing nothing. "The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get down voted." True, and this is also an official guideline. (A good one, too, IMO).