Your observation that A16Z's tactics were presented as more nuanced than this strategy is also true, but that doesn't make the parent comment wrong, or even "uncharitable". The investment thesis, as presented by the article, is pretty much a truism. I don't find it to be interesting or insightful, and like you, I have to make arguments in my head as to why it might not be inane.
It seems to me that you're carrying one set of opinions about the subject, using them to interpret the issue in the most positive light, and then bludgeoning people who take a more critical view. You can call that "uncharitable", but it seems to me to be a literal interpretation of facts: A16Z's thesis was far less interesting than the tactics needed to get the deal flow to make it work.
I'll give you this much: what the article says about their 'thesis', in a single throwaway line having nothing to do with the rest of the (long) text, is a truism. Now let's apply the Principle of Charity again. What are the odds that that's because the founders were morons vs. that the article didn't go deeply enough into their investment thinking to say anything interesting about it?
> It seems to me that you're carrying one set of opinions about the subject
What opinions do you have in mind? The one I think I'm carrying is that HN comments shouldn't make uncharitable assumptions to set up caricatures, because that makes for lame, bilious discussion. That's not a small matter, because whatever discussion we have here, it's what we're likely to get more of.
Many of the most learned discussions I see on reddit are in the circlejerk subs. Particularly the "New School" ones.
That said, I always struggle to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. At work I have a mantra about code I don't like: "I might have done it differently". The coder on the other side of it was doing his or her best. I've seen things that on their face where just flatly crazy and only later learned the reasoning. A lot of them remain crazy, but crazy with a reason for the craziness. The usual missing ingredient is communication, which is why another useful thing to remind myself is "let's go ask".
In general, though, it is a long and widely accepted tradition that the powerful don't need us to be nice to them -- that mockery is one of the few inalienable counterbalances the plebs have against those living on top of the hills.
No doubt there's a socio-physiological function to saying bad things about the rich and powerful. It feels good, and you can say literally anything in that genre and get applause (on HN, upvotes). So it's inevitable. But it goes against the mandate of this site, which is "gratify intellectual curiosity". Note how that excludes both other forms of curiosity and other forms of gratification.
There's no political or ideological dimension to this (e.g. pro-VC or anti-VC). For present purposes, none of that matters—what matters is the form of the comment: is it reflexive or reflective? Or, to use your term: is the blood rising? That's what seems to determine discussion quality. If there's a better principle than the Principle of Charity for encoding this distinction in an actionable form, I'd love to know. I haven't seen anything else that comes close.
My own style of moderation, based on long observation, is very few, very simple rules backed by ruthless and unapologetic moderation. I appreciate your leniency.
I think the answer here is to answer, here, if you disagree. It's humiliating to be corrected in public, I always hate being on the receiving end of it, but if I'm stuck with an impulsive streak then that's just part of thinking out loud on the internet.
I don't think the consequences you're worried about are likely. People expressed similar worries when we introduced "avoid gratuitous negativity", which didn't happen; there's marginally less gratuitous negativity (at least I think so) and that's about it.
This is a good example of why I think we should add the Principle of Charity [1] to the HN guidelines. That's the one that says you should respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of another's position, not try to knock it down to the weakest. The word "charity" makes it sound like an ethical principle, but it isn't, or needn't be. It's simply that assuming stupidity on the part of others makes for weak discussion.
(FWIW, a stronger plausible interpretation of that passage is this: since our success depends on funding the few companies that generate most of the returns, we need a strategy that gives us an edge in getting to them, so let's focus on promoting ourselves to founders. Maybe that wasn't it, either—it's what I got from skimming the article for just a minute—but if we're practicing the Principle of Charity, it's preferable to a moronic one like "let's only fund winners", chosen because it's easy to caricature.)
1. http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html