what sort of gamification is there on HN, upvotes not much else? Maybe it's plausible to strike a deal with oneself not to look at upvotes or downvotes, I think that would make comments more sincere. It would be great to have a setting not to display upvotes and down-votes on your own comments but to still be able to respond on threads tab

Generally I'm glad that HN has minimal gamification, at least compared to the worst offenders reddit, fb, twitter etc.