It's a very controversial topic, and downvoting to indicate disagreement is allowed. Seeing so many downvotes under these circumstances is not that surprising, is it?
I was under the perception (new to HN) that downvotes are for when someone's comment does not add value to the conversation (eg. memes and name calling). Downvoting something you disagree is dangerous because it'll feed those that truly believe that to believe it even more (being silenced). Instead of downvoting we need to dedicate time to reason through why x is misinformation and walk through how you get to your conclusion. Sure not everyone has the time for that but also because no one is willing to dedicate time for that, we have this quick easy divisions with no explanation.
Your perception is incorrect. You are certainly not alone in wanting downvotes to be different, but the current policy is that downvotes for disagreement are allowed.
I see, thank you for clarifying. That's kind of unfortunate because I feel that just because everyone feels one way doesn't mean that it is the truth. Sometimes when I don't have an opinion yet on a certain controversial topic and I go to a forum with no upvote/downvote system (very rare it exists), it lets me start with a un-biased ground and read critically into each person's pov.
