That view is about 18 years old and HN was very different then.

As with any communication platform it risks turning into an echo chamber, and I am pretty sure that particular PG view has been rejected for many years (I think dang wrote on this more than once). HN works very hard to avoid becoming politicized and not discouraging minority views is a large part of that.

For example, I now seldom bother to write anything that I expect to rub the left coast folks the wrong way: I don't care about karma, but downvoted posts are effectively hidden. There is little point of writing things that few will see. It is not too bad at HN yet, but the acceptance of the downvote for disagreement is the strongest thing that pushes HN from discussions of curious individuals towards the blah-quality of "who gets more supporters" goals of the modern social media. My 2c.