[linkregister]

Rather than stating, without data, that Democratic Party alignment led to flagging of the story here on HN, one can look at the numerous overt statements by some of the most active users. These users claim they spend significant time flagging all political stories not tied to computing or science.

These statements are trivially found using https://hn.algolia.com.

[renewiltord]

Typing “Trump” into that trivially reveals disparate outcomes. Then again perhaps “Trump says Maduro captured” is computing and science to these people. I have no peer-reviewed evidence that they don’t think that so I must admit it as equally likely as anything else.

[linkregister]

It is a common error to misunderstand the base rate of an event. In this case, the frequency of media articles about Trump dwarf other political subjects.

Or one could assume a vast conspiracy to explain the phenomenon.

[renewiltord]

False dichotomies like that are easy mistakes to make. Consider Reddit, no conspiracy, and yet overwhelmingly of some opinions. Coordination requiring conspiracies is naïve, but forgivable among novices of epistemology.

[linkregister]

Observers of this exchange will note the main point, the base rate fallacy, has not been addressed. Instead, a nit about rhetorical punctuation was indulged.