I think this is the correct answer. HN goes to extensive efforts to avoid flame wars in comments, and in the one post on the topic I saw reach the front page (before being removed), the comments were an absolute hellhole.

I didn't flag it, but when I last looked all the comments were of people about as well informed as the author and I filed under "trash fire, don't get involved".

Nearly all of the document's factual claims are squarely in the middle of academic consensus. If you find the arguments morally troubling, just say so, but don't contribute to the raving anti-scientific delusions of the blank-slate crowd.

I couldn't have caricatured the original posts better myself. Bravo.

You're probably right about the flagging. Though I imagine there's a bit of loyalty to Google at work here as well. A lot of folks have tied their careers and personal lives to Google, which tends to lead to a bit of justification-based blindness to their faults (this phenomenon is much more visible in the "discussions" around the so-called console wars).

This was my thought as well. When I first heard about this weekend, this was the first site I went to see what people were saying.

The only I could find any of the threads was by doing a google search for "google manifesto" & "hacker news".

The debate in a few of the threads were quite diplomatic. However, the social media universe reacted as expected. Liberals condemned the author for the typical "racist, bigot, homophobe" diatribe while the conservatives argument was, "Guy speaks out about not being able to speak out, and then gets carpet bombed by SJW's back into silence."

It really sucks this is where the country is. When EVERY topic is off limits and you cannot hold a rational discourse over something, it should be clear evidence the decline of Western Civilization is at hand.

The HN search box is an alternative to Google.

I suspect that some people flagged because they don't find rhetorical debates intellectually interesting. Speaking of the decline of civilization, neither did Socrates now that I think about it.

I assumed they were getting flagged as dupes as there were 5+ separate active discussions about the same topic.