HN in general will tolerate dissent, if you can provide good argumentation.
Sure there's groupthink in HN as in any other forum, but HN is more open to different ideas than any other forum that I have known since the days of Usenet in late 1980s.
Yes, I came to realise that when it comes (among other subjects) to 'tech' criticism, it easier to have an open discussion with various points of view on HN than on my generic national subreddit. That takes the biscuit!
I just wish someone could come up with a new Usenet (<rant>instead of a dozen of open-source copies of damn Twitter</rant>). Something that doesn't depend on a company or a couple of individuals. In similar vein to what happens for the Twitter copies I ranted about, but for long, threaded discussions in Reddit/HN/Usenet style. Oh, and Reddit lacks proper hierarchies, so the discovery of subreddits is pretty bad. So, yes, more like Usenet.
Sure there's groupthink in HN as in any other forum, but HN is more open to different ideas than any other forum that I have known since the days of Usenet in late 1980s.