I tend to agree with you, but I don't think there's any way to change it. HN naturally attracts the sort of people who can't resist twiddling the knobs, making

I tend to agree with you, but I don't think there's any way to change it. HN naturally attracts the sort of people who can't resist twiddling the knobs, making grand proposals to twiddle the knobs, putting up charts and graphs depicting the results of their knob-twiddling simulations, and (of course) complaining that the current setting of the knobs is responsible for all of the evils in the world today. This is how many hacker personalities work, and you're not going to drive out this kind of meta-discussion without driving out many of the hackers, which would be bad. I just try to ignore it to the extent that I can. Which is not very well -- it's kind of fun to watch people propose 1,001 variations on the moderation system. I'm particularly fond of the genre that involves turning those of us with hundreds of karma points into all-powerful demigods. I don't think that's a good idea at all, but, like the One Ring, it is hard to resist. :)