That's an excellent suggestion with different implications than mine.

Hiding / colouring the ^ would tell the users that they shouldn't be upvoting before they read.

But as you say, there are a variety of complicated mechanisms behind-the-scenes that could simply give low weight to votes by non-readers.

You could also mess with the time-mechanics of upvotes with various properties, with the goal of just killing happenstance cascade upvoting. And this could vary with site traffic.

However, there is always a danger to adding more knobs to tweak.