Fair enough. Regarding your last paragraph though, I do think though that intellectual curiosity is a key tool of subjugation. Oligarchs and tech businessmen have discovered that technology is a key wealth concentration tool and the most effective way to utilize that is to give the technically-minded intelligent a world of wonders to explore and create so that the most wealthy can use those tools to concentrate the majority of the wealth. If we consider that psychologically, many of us (myself included) have used intellectual exploration as a source of beauty and comfort, this method is all the more effective.
Maybe. But the intellectual curiosity I'm talking about is not purely technical, and HN does host a lot of historical, social, and (yes) political* conversation.
What we want to avoid is having the site taken over by the latter and bursting into flames. That's actually the default outcome, so we have to spend a lot of energy avoiding it.
