Some of the votes can be quite useful.

In some situations a "Answer is wrong" can stop a noob from following an incorrect solution. One problem with people who do Google is that they may stop reading after having found what they consider is a working solution. That it 5 or 10 posts later is a message explaining that the earlier solution is incorrect is often missed.

Posts with one or more "Informative" or "Good answer" can also take advantage of the "highlighting" to let people focus on a idea or suggestion that multiple regular (at least 6 month since registration to be allowed to vote?) users have considered worth reading.

The problem comes when votes are used to punish people.

Someone who gets a positive vote are probably not too concerned about whos vote it was. And most probably, the receiver of a positive vote will not spend any more time thinking about the vote.

Someone who gets a negative vote may get quite hurt. And it would be a bit touch to make a second post trying to defend the view from the previous - negatively voted - post knowing that this may lead to yet one more negative vote. And the anonymity of the vote makes it easy to cast it, but harder for the receiver to try to "defend" himself/herself.

Yes, we will now and then get threads discussing voting for the simple reason that the votes or maybe karma points are a bit controversial. Not everyone sees them in the same way which can be important when the voter and the receiver of the vote have very different views on the meaning of the vote. The reason why I did create a thread about it earlier was just to try to make people think about this issue - that the receiver may have a completely different view, in which case the receiver can be very sad even if that wasn't the original intention when casting the vote.