Thats a good question. The answer is no, for two reasons:
(1) there's no clear way to distinguish "absurd claims that have no basis in reality" from statements that are simply false, and
(2) there's no clear way to distinguish false statements from true ones. We don't have a truth meter.
In the absence of clear criteria, what would we do? Decide what is true ourselves? Not possible—we're ludicrously unqualified, and the community would never support it. Also, I shudder to think of the karma one would incur.
Another factor is community. It would not serve community to ban people, or kill posts, for being wrong. A true community allows people to be wrong—belonging is about relatedness, not correctness—and a robust community would withstand wrongness the way a robust immune system withstands pathogens. I'm not saying that HN is either a true community or a robust community, yet, but that is the aspiration.
(1) there's no clear way to distinguish "absurd claims that have no basis in reality" from statements that are simply false, and
(2) there's no clear way to distinguish false statements from true ones. We don't have a truth meter.
In the absence of clear criteria, what would we do? Decide what is true ourselves? Not possible—we're ludicrously unqualified, and the community would never support it. Also, I shudder to think of the karma one would incur.
There are other factors too. The mandate of HN is intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Curiosity needs the freedom to get things wrong sometimes. Finding the truth involves probing the edges.
Another factor is community. It would not serve community to ban people, or kill posts, for being wrong. A true community allows people to be wrong—belonging is about relatedness, not correctness—and a robust community would withstand wrongness the way a robust immune system withstands pathogens. I'm not saying that HN is either a true community or a robust community, yet, but that is the aspiration.