> This can look like "victim-blaming", but it's really more-than-anything a yearning for people to keep their standards of evidence high, and to avoid jumping to conclusions.
That really depends, now, doesn't it, on what the subject is? :) HackerNews seems, in general, to have a very low standard of evidence for things like "the NSA is doing something evil", and tends to be quite credulous on such things. It seems to have a very, very, _very_ high standard of evidence for "bigotry exists" though.
That's certainly one way to frame the reference classes involved. Let me try an alternate one:
> HackerNews seems, in general, to have a very low standard of evidence for "[large organizational structure] is doing something evil", and tends to be quite credulous on such things. It seems to have a very, very, _very_ high standard of evidence for "[individual] is doing something evil" though.
I think this succinctly predicts more of HN's behavior, personally. HN is just generally afraid to condemn individuals for much at all.
That doesn't exclude your conclusion from also being true, though: HN can be both resistant to condemning individuals, while also being biased against believing that bigotry is a thing that exists. But assuming that either one is the "whole cause" of any particular effect, will cause effects to seem weirdly large, because of the confounding effect of the other.
As a generalization this might be true, or not... but likely a lot of people commenting here just have a globally high standard of evidence. Why are they deleted from the picture?
That really depends, now, doesn't it, on what the subject is? :) HackerNews seems, in general, to have a very low standard of evidence for things like "the NSA is doing something evil", and tends to be quite credulous on such things. It seems to have a very, very, _very_ high standard of evidence for "bigotry exists" though.