r/science is now r/poorStudiesThatJustifyMyBeliefs

You aren’t kidding. Add r/Psychology to that list. It’s all bad social science studies now.

“Study Proves Republicans are Dumb”

I’m fairly certain that rephrased versions of “Study Proves Trump Voters have low IQ” are posted there just about weekly, and the rest is just psychedelic research.

It’s one of the laws of the internet: as the size of a community grows, the quality approaches a stadium full of drunk sweaty sports fans.

One of the reasons I hope hacker news stays relatively obscure. Fingers crossed

Agreed. I’ve definitely already noticed a significant decline in comment quality here since the Reddit debacle.

^^ Comments like this are low value. “Things are getting bad”. No proof or evidence.

Not just r/science. The hard part is that this logic applies also to "word/science" and to "world/society", and that this issue of belief confirmation will deepen until we learn to sufficiently value public good (knowledge discovery is a part of it) in our capitalist societies. Not easy... Unfortunately, it may take another World War for our societies to value public good more than we do currently. Call me a pessimist or give me reasons to think differently.