> The downranking is particularly weird since HN's professed norms go extremely hard on something along the lines of "you should take atypical opinions seriously since they're more likely to contain new information than opinions that are conventional-wisdom-with-a-few-little-sprinkles-on-top."
HN's "professed norms" (i.e., the guidelines) do not state that, and opinions, atypical or otherwise, have zero information content beyond the information that so-and-so holds such-and-such opinion.
Atypical opinions may be, on average, more likely to be accompanied by intellectually interesting arguments, but that's, at best, a loose correlation, not an iron law that where one thing occurs the other will also.
HN's "professed norms" (i.e., the guidelines) do not state that, and opinions, atypical or otherwise, have zero information content beyond the information that so-and-so holds such-and-such opinion.
Atypical opinions may be, on average, more likely to be accompanied by intellectually interesting arguments, but that's, at best, a loose correlation, not an iron law that where one thing occurs the other will also.