Why not just get rid of the whole post? It's not relevant to HN and the comments range from uninteresting to terrible.
I don't agree that it isn't relevant to HN. The central value of this site is intellectual curiosity, construed broadly (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). If you try to define that in a way that detaches from larger human concerns, you make it smaller. Curiosity doesn't benefit from that.
There are many reasons to be unhappy with these threads and how the topic lands on HN generally. I am by no means happy—I just don't think that the alternative is better. Curiosity ultimately has to do with relating to what's real and true. You can't impose a narrow view of on- and off-topcicness on that.
Trying to keep HN true to those values is subject to a thousand constraints, some obvious, many not. That means the problem can never be solved—not to everyone's satisfaction, nor even to anyone's satisfaction. Therefore we all have a certain amount of dissatisfaction to tolerate.
Sorry but I think you made the wrong call here.
The comments are actually better than expected given the sensitivity of the topic at hand.
That is far from the case, as you can see for yourself if you look more closely.
People (I don't mean you personally, but all of us—it seems to be basic human bias) are far too quick to jump to "always". I call this the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on.
It seems to be very similar to Baader-Meinhoff. I guess it’s called “frequency illusion” now, which is much more descriptive.
Thanks for the reply though—I hope someday someone will come up with a good name for it; or better, still, point out that it's a known bias in the standard repertoire and tell me what it's called.