I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out  at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.