> The idea that it happened to be a completely different subset of HN's audience commenting on each case is statistically implausible.
This doesn't seem obvious to me at all. It seems not only plausible that this could be the case, but unsurprising.
Almost nobody here reads every story in the feed. Any given story on HN is going to be read by a collection of people that differs from story to story. And most of those people won't make any comment whatsoever. It seems unsurprising to me that a story on, say, capital punishment could get a large number of people who are passionate about that topic, and a story on pedophilia could get a large number of people who are passionate about that topic, and the majority of commenters in both could hold opposite opinions without even one of them being hypocritical.
This doesn't seem obvious to me at all. It seems not only plausible that this could be the case, but unsurprising.
Almost nobody here reads every story in the feed. Any given story on HN is going to be read by a collection of people that differs from story to story. And most of those people won't make any comment whatsoever. It seems unsurprising to me that a story on, say, capital punishment could get a large number of people who are passionate about that topic, and a story on pedophilia could get a large number of people who are passionate about that topic, and the majority of commenters in both could hold opposite opinions without even one of them being hypocritical.