It isn't crazy or mad to consider people who vote on your comments as on average equal to you in rationality. Quite the opposite: if each of us assumes that we are more rational than those who vote, this will be like everyone thinking that he is above average in driving ability or whatever.

And in fact, many people do use this information: numerous times someone has said something like, "Since my position is against community consensus I think I will have to modify it," or something along these lines.

You could make better arguments for your tactic than the ones you are making.

a) the community's karma votes represent some sort of evidence of an argument's rightness

It does. Noisy, biased evidence but still evidence. If I am downvoted I will review my position, make sure it is correct and trace out any the likely status related reasons for downvoting that would give an indication on how much truth value I think the votes contain.

We prefer to prefer to be wrong, but it's rare we actually prefer it.

Well, if I prefer to prefer being wrong, then I plan ahead accordingly, which includes a policy against ridiculous karma games motivated by fleeting emotional reactions.

but practically all it does is incentivize your debate partners to go ad hominem or ignore you

So my options are:

1. Attempt to manipulate the community into admitting I'm right, or
2. Eat the emotional consequences of being called names and ignored, in exchange for either honest or visibly inappropriate feedback from my debate partners.

I'll go with 2. Sorry about your insecurities.

But how can you have any self-respect, knowing that you prefer to feel right than be right? For me, the feeling of being being wrong is much less-bad than believing I'm so unable to handle being wrong that I'm sabotaging the beliefs of myself and those around me. I would regard myself as pathetic, if I made decisions like that.