As you note: the context (it's a bit hard to grasp from the link without prior knowledge): this is a question that was asked numerous leading intellectuals, as 2013's "Annual Question" by The Edge. The essays are their responses to the question (I'd initially read the Chinese genocide response as the only response to the question).

I find the presentation a bit difficult to follow as the full essays are presented on a single page (useful for long reads, difficult to follow if you want to quickly survey the topics). Without even a table of contents.

Even the overview page only lists contributors, without specifying their topic or title: http://www.edge.org/contributors/what-should-we-be-worried-a...

I rather agree with your soapbox preacher assessment. I'm underwhelmed by most of the responses.

> I find it silly and vague. They might as well have said "step on your soapbox and preach, brother/sister."

Cool, so you don't want to discuss it at all? Or you want to discuss how we shouldn't be discussing anything?

We should just refactor HN and have a single thread where all the really smart people can list all of the links on HN they think are stupid.

'They might as well have said "step on your soapbox and preach, brother/sister."'

What's wrong with that? It brought out some interesting issues to think about.

People without soapboxes would (and did, actually) have dull responses.