There's an interesting meta pattern here. pg has obviously thought a lot about this change, he's the creator of HN and he's the one who knows the site the best. All pg is saying is this: let's try it out and see if it works as intended. That is, it is an experiment, and reality is the ultimate judge.

If you look in this thread, the original thread, or the latest poll you see a different attitude. It's not viewed as an experiment where reality will be the judge at all. Instead the comments basically boils down to "This is good." or "This is bad.", plus a few technical questions.

How come so few people think of it in terms of an experiment? Isn't this the supposed standard m.o. for startups as well as for coding?

Is it just that people who have the wait-and-see attitude don't comment, so all we hear about is from the vocal crowd? (This was the case for me before writing this post.) Is it some form of domain dependence going on here? I find this to be a very curious pattern.