Getting karma by post describing how you got karma? Nice move... (guess, I won't get much karma for this comment)
And in fact as I can see there's no much use in HN karma - smart comments are more useful. At least, they can do you good when you apply to YC (that's what PG says at least :)).
I voted the article up not because of its subject matter, but rather for the thorough way in which he analyzed and presented it. It was a notable amount of effort to collect the data, and it takes some skill to put it together in a way which one can derive meaning from.
He then proceeds to do exactly that, and give us all a good tactic for increasing our karma: Post Consistently Interesting Stuff over a Long Time. Sure, we all read that and think, "_duh_, of course that's how to get it", but it's nice to see that there's data backing it.
Well, I understand that hackers are a bit like scientists - they like to have proved data (by the way, I'm more like a humanitarian who believes his feelings and intuition).
And I understand your reasons and they're quite good. I don't think that it's a bad article to vote up - moreover I like the article too. There's some "pure math" magic in it that I also like (although I'm a humanitarian as I've mentioned before).
And in fact as I can see there's no much use in HN karma - smart comments are more useful. At least, they can do you good when you apply to YC (that's what PG says at least :)).