That would be the ideal case, but the reality is a bit far off. As I said somewhere else, in the past the most upvotes I ever received were for sarcastic comments to a particular tech company (which I hate), but they arguably might not have contributed to the discussion. On the other hand, a few total negative votes were received on comments which I thought added to the discussion, but some people with high karma just didn't agree to it.

Now the problem with this new system is this: for unpopular links or articles, they'll never come to the front page, and thus very few 1000 karma people will see those. And thus, those comments might never become 'live' and visible to others, not creating any discussion at all, even further causing it to never become popular, because only conversation attracts more conversation.