As your comment implies, the HN guidelines don't have much to do with being right or being wrong. They're mostly about how to behave when one is right (or feels one is), or someone else is wrong (or one feels they are). Feeling right is what makes people feel like it's ok to be snarky or mean.

People often say "but I'm just pointing out facts", but this is not a good argument - there are infinitely many facts, and they don't select themselves - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....

Truth is what we're after, so posting right things and correcting wrong things is important. Yet if you think about it, it's neither a sufficient condition for a good HN post, nor a necessary one.

It isn't sufficient because people sometimes express true things in aggressive ways that damage the container and end up discrediting the truth*. That hurts all of us.

It isn't a necessary condition, either, because people are often wrong in good faith, with the intention of finding the truth. There shouldn't be a rule against that. Freedom to make mistakes is essential to curiosity and finding the truth in the end. And such a rule would be impossible to enforce in any case, since we don't have a truth meter.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...