The average comment quality nosedives when the subject has in any way been politicized. I don’t always follow it, but as a rule for any post about climate, immigration, diversity, and so on reading the comments is at best a waste of time even when the submission is high quality.

Comment quality is generally high on computing related technical subjects—unsurprisingly for a community composed of subject matter experts.

Finally I’ve noticed mixed comment quality on financial posts. There is significant noise but there are many commenters with an excellent operational grasp of how our financial system really works.

Yes agreed. I find it's pretty easy to tell comments and stories where people are genuinely interested in learning things, and those where there is a lot of "advocacy" or meming of a political position they heard from somebody else.

Some subjects attract a lot of the latter comments. This applies to both technical and business stories.

IMO if you want to get more value, then learn to tell the difference, and don't spend a lot of time "arguing with people on the Internet". You could do that forever on HN, but you can also get a ton of value out of it if you spend your attention wisely.

People needed most in political debates have removed themselves from it.

As someone else mentioned, I avoid anything political unless I'm purposely diving in for entertainment. The tech comments are normally high quality, and tend to force me to think about my opinions. Also, while everywhere has some level of group think, the tech comments tend to be pretty balanced.

I've developed a bit of timer in my head. If I feel like I've perused HN too long or catch myself just refreshing the home page, I close the tab and move on.

Finally, and this isn't HN specific, I never start my day by checking sites. I always do a solid 2-3 hours of work (sometimes 'deep'), before anything else.

EDIT

Other thing, is don't argue on the internet or HN. I'll share my opinion and/or respond a bit, but if someone really wants to argue, I let them have it and move on. Takes too much time, and doesn't gain anything once I'm ok with my position. I mentioned the other day in another HN post that I had stopped going to FB for this exact reason. Zero helpful information, and it just led to arguments which take too much time and accomplish nothing.

Great advice, thank you! I think I need to find something else to read over breakfast. That small habit is probably where I went wrong.

The mental timer is an interesting idea too. Basically active cultivation of awareness to allow discipline.