Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a great perspective. In fact I upvoted your comment just now. By contrast, it also prevents users from commenting. See dang's posts on this. Regardless, it's interesting to note that it also, indirectly, highlights interesting comments. Do you also find that interesting?
Typically, if a comment has been downvoted, I use it as a reason to filter it out. There’s more comments than I am going to read so reducing the pool is useful to me…and I don’t identify as a contrarian. Thinking about it, downvoting for disagreement is the analog of upvoting for agreement.
But my point isn't to criticize anyone for downvoting. Just the opposite. It's to illustrate that thinking outside the box is in itself disagreeable, which, as is the case here, can be a searchable metric.