additional thought, after ability to edit had passed:

I wonder if it's to intentionally deflate scores which drop to -4. For particularly bad ones, it'd encourage moderators to downvote.

Not that I particularly think yours is. Must've rubbed a few the wrong way.

Quick quips tend to polarize people on HN: either excessive upvotes or minus 4's. I think it's because since there's not much to go on (usually a sentence), it's like you're throwing all your eggs into a very small basket.

And since HN already discourages one-liners, I think the moral is to quip at your peril!

EDIT: this was meant to be a reply under @shasta.

I'm surprised that ~45 and counting people would downvote this. I assume these are people who saw "See no evil, hear no evil" and are taking it out on me.

Or, they felt you turned an honest, personal, on-topic comment into a bad joke.

upvoted, I thought it was funny.