While I find the article and some of the comments interesting, I don't think it's a good fit for HN. Articles should provoke curious conversation; this one, judging from the number of dead posts, is provoking too much tribalism.
There are plenty of curious comments in this thread. Those take time to show up, because they require reflection, not just reflexivity, and that function is just a lot slower. Repeating something from a hot, bubbling cache—pre-boiling rage!—is super fast. That is why comments show up so quickly to muck up fresh threads with angry reflexes.
Of course, those comments trigger angry reflexes in others, so we're in a flamewar before curious conversation has had a chance to put its boots on. Blaming "HN" for this is a red herring—the overwhelming majority of HN readers and commenters are doing nothing of the sort, and some of them have interesting things to say about barber shops.
I don't think you see the whole of the harm done here. Yes, the extreme opinions come from one side, but to deal with it, the non-extremists have to take opinion-suppressing measures. Just the process of recognising and flagging posts that are bad for us is polarising.
There's a balance to be struck: I don't like the idea that the extremists determine what interesting content is permissible to discuss on HN. But while bringing attention to and discussing this article is good for consciousness-raising, I think this polarising process is damaging HN.
