I think you're conflating two kinds of interest. Doing this leads to mistaken conclusions about HN.

Political interest and intellectual interest are not the same. There is overlap, of course [1], but there is also a huge amount of political and social material which is not primarily about intellectual curiosity. Most of that is off topic on HN (as the site guidelines say), even though much of it is far more important—as you say—than most anything on HN.

People who feel intensely always want us to change this, but if we changed it then HN would become a current affairs site [2] – and there are always people who feel intensely.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...