Steven, this is a great point! While I hope that everyone gives each other a chance, there'll inevitably be people who'd prefer not to hear from each other. We are still hashing this out in our product development meetings, but here's a run-down of the way it exists now:

You can follow commenters, and they can follow you. If, for some reason, you prefer someone *not* follow you, you can remove them from your list of followers. They'd still be able to reply to your comments, but by default, you wouldn't see it. We'd offer a "click to show replies from $username" button. 

You could also "mute" any person, independent of follow status. You'd get the same thing in that scenario: in a given comment thread, in place of their comment, you'd see a button that says "show comment from $username". So, you could still opt-in to read their thoughts occasionally.

What do you think about that system? It's still in development, so now's your chance to weigh in!