This idea that comments should be removed from the payout pool entirely is interesting. Right now, because I can reward comments like posts, I want to. I want people to interact with me, and I like when they do, and when I see a comment I like, I want to upvote it.

But if all comments were simply "decline reward" I can imagine two feasible workaround scenarios. One, there would certainly be a bot developed that you give posting permission to, and when you "liked" a comment, it would go to the user's most recent post that hadn't paid out yet and deliver your vote value there, while letting you leave the $ emoji on the comment (or whatever)
Or two, people would just stop thinking of comments as posts. It would take away valuable functionality, I think, but this EIP is already taking away most of the valuable functionality of steem as a crypto-rewards social media site, so why not that, too?