> Given HN is often the enlightened discourse space that's only the byproduct of enforcing herd mentality. Restricted groups of individuals, expressing a rest

> Given HN is often the enlightened discourse space that's only the byproduct of enforcing herd mentality. Restricted groups of individuals, expressing a restricted group of opinions in a restricted environment where only a restricted set of well defined behaviour is allowed tend to disagree less. But that's not how a discourse usually takes place or what its purpose is. Discourse takes place among different people expressing vastly different opinions in vastly different ways, mostly due to different cultural backgrounds, that generate a lot of conflict, to find a shared common ground. Repressing the conflicting part means repressing the most important part of the discourse, leaving the door open only to the shallow exchange of information. That can be useful, but won't change anyone's mind. It's the reason why cults tend to stick together even in the craziest of situations. They feel they belong to something only they understand deeply, while everybody else is wrong or insane or stupid or corrupted. For example: HN guidelines states "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." But ideological and political are not the same thing, they are, in fact, one on the opposite sides of the spectrum of the other and not as in "two sides of the same coin" but as in "one is bad, the other is the opposite of bad". Asking people to not engage in political debates, it's itself political. It is the oldest political ideology ever existed: hypocrisy.