I always enjoy HN discussions on non-technical topics, because the community here is far better (and slightly different) than others. Which isn't that difficult

I always enjoy HN discussions on non-technical topics, because the community here is far better (and slightly different) than others. Which isn't that difficult considering the state of online comments in general, but still... HN (and the tech community) has a libertarian streak, in addition to being somewhat left-of-center. Stories like this tend to unite these fundamentally opposing constituencies, resulting in more substantive discussions than other political topics. It also helps that the story is fundamentally non-partisan, in that both major US parties can be blamed for the situation. I still consider it a blemish on HN's conscience, and a failure of HN leadership's responsibility to the community, that topics where this community is in a prime position to actually affect change tend to bring out the worst in (some) people and have in effect been banned to keep the peace. I'm not just speaking of "diversity in tech", where I can somewhat see how it has the potential of instilling fear in those traditionally profiting from discrimination. There, I can at least understand the mechanism at work, even though I consider it logically flawed. But even summoning all my powers to understand opposing viewpoints I cannot fathom why this community reacts as dismissive as it does to, for example, stories (and projects / algorithms / ...) of algorithmic discrimination in machine learning. It would seem to be a topic that's both interesting from a technological and scientific standpoint, as well as welcome to everyone working in the space and presumably preferring not to do harm vs the opposite. My best explanation is that there is a fundamental disgust in the tech community now of everything coming from, or even associated with, the social sciences. My second-best explanation is that tech has taken a sharp right turn at some point in the last 15 years, which would also explain why I remember only united opposition against software patents, and support for open source, from the first slashdot discussions I read. Whereas today, I see lots of sympathy for software patents in HN threats, and Open Source (and especially the GPL) are often spoken of with disgust.