That would make sense if all down voting did was show the net score, or the up/down breakdown.

However, when an article has a more down votes than up votes, it is also made harder to read, and the bigger the difference, the harder to read it becomes. That makes pg's remark make little sense, unless HN is supposed to be a place where disagreeing with the majority is discouraged, which is not very hackerish. Some clarification from pg would be helpful here.