HN has always said that there are two types of interesting
i) intense but shallow
ii) deep
and that intensely shallow topics should be avoided where possible.
I'm really bad at this. I comment on too many topics that are intensely interesting when I should just ignore them. (I do however try to upvote all the interesting and technical stuff).
Which amount to "whatever piques one's intellectual curiocity" and "whatever good hackers like". Apparently this piqued HN users intellectual curiosity and they like it.
Besides an intelligent person can have an intelligent discussion about any topic, even Kim Kardassian. And the post is in final analysis about policy, freedom of speech, adapting to the digital age, etc.
While I wish your argument were correct, it's not. The flaw is in the inference voted for → was intellectually interested.
A model that appears to fit the data [1] is that multiple kinds of interest drive voting, and intellectual interest is not the most powerful one. This is the weakness of the story-voting mechanism. It is why, on a site that values intellectual interest, the vote signal must pass through other filters, like flagging and moderation.
>> Which amount to "whatever piques one's intellectual curiocity" and "whatever good hackers like"
It only amounts to that if you completely disregard this part: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "
Whatever the HN community votes up, HN is "the place for it".