Yes. Upvoting and downvoting are the brokenness; users are just interacting with the UI model they're presented with. Better low-effort, high-reward consensus systems are needed.
I've actually changed the topcolor to #222222 in my settings so I don't see what my account's karma is. It completely ruins the ability to see the "new" "threads" etc links without a truly irritating amount of eyestrain but it's worth it - I recently asked genuine question about something I wanted clarification on and the comment ended up being downvoted to -4. Now I can't see my karma score I don't care about this, whereas before when my karma was shown on almost every single page throughout the site I'd obsess over making my comments universally good.