I was too lazy and tired to parse your sentence and replied to the argument I would have liked to be refuted.

If I understand the point in question it seems we are in agreement - voting is evidence about the reasoning of the voter which can in turn be evidence about the comment itself. In the case of downvotes (and this is where we disagree), I actually think it is better that we don't have access to that evidence. Mostly because down that road lies politics and partly because people don't all have the same criteria for voting. There is a difference between "I think the comment should be at +4 but it is currently at +6", "I think this comment contains bad reasoning", "this comment is on the opposing side of the argument", "this comment is of lesser quality than the parent and/or child" and "I am reciprocating voting behavior". Down this road lies madness.

I'm still suspicious that this kind of voting system will stay being of much value once wisdom and the refinement of it is outnumbered by special interest groups.

I don't think we disagree substantially on this.

We do seem to have have a different picture of the the likely influence of public voting if it were to replace anonymous voting. From what you are saying part of this difference would seem to be due to differences in the way we account for the social influence of negative (and even just different) social feedback. A high priority for me is minimising any undesirable effects of (social) politics on both the conversation in general and on me in particular.

Pardon me. I deleted the grandparent planning to move it to a meta thread. The comment, fresh from the clipboard in the form that I would have re-posted, is this:

I just love to do that.

Thats ok. For what it is worth, while I upvoted your comment this time I'll probably downvote future instances of self-deprecation. I also tend to downvote people when they apologise for no reason. I just find wussy behaviors annoying. I actually stopped watching The Sorcerer's Apprentice a couple of times before I got to the end - even Nicholas Cage as a millenia old vagabond shooting lightening balls from his hands can only balance out so much self-deprecation from his apprentice.

Note that some instances of self-deprecation are highly effective and quite the opposite of wussy, but it is a fairly advanced social move that only achieves useful ends if you know exactly what you are doing.

Overcoming bias? I would rapidly start to question my own judgment

For most people it is very hard not to question your own judgement when it is subject to substantial disagreement. Nevertheless, "you being wrong" is not the only reason for other people to disagree with you. Those biasses you mention are quite prolific.

and gain the ability to directly ask people why they downvoted a certain item.

We already have the ability to ask why a comment is up or down voted. Because we currently have anonymity such questions can be asked without being a direct social challenge to those who voted. This cuts out all sorts of biases and allows communication that would not be possible if votes were out there in the open.

Take EY, I doubt he has the time to actually comment on everything he reads. That does not imply the decision to downvote a certain item was due to poor reasoning.

A counter-example to a straw man. (I agree and maintain my previous claim.)

I don't see how this system can stay useful if this site will become increasingly popular and attract a lot of people who vote based on non-rational criteria.

That could be considered a 'high quality problem'. That many people wishing to explore concepts related to improving rational thinking and behavior would be remarkable!

I do actually agree that the karma system could be better implemented. The best karma system I have seen was one in which the weight of votes depended on the karma of the voter. The example I am thinking of allocated weight vote according to 'rank' but when plotted the vote/voter.karma relationship would look approximately logarithmic. That system would be farm more stable and probably more useful than the one we have, although it is somewhat less simple.

Another feature that some sites have is making only positive votes public. (This is something that I would support.)