"I didn't mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it efficient. I didn't want to waste people's time telling them things they already knew. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs. But I suppose that's bound to yield an alarming book."
Also, comments that amount to "I like this" can be compressed to an upvote. So we don't see many of those.
When you make claims and take up people's time, that's credit. When you don't fulfill that credit with something you promised, you have taken more than you've given.
That upsets people.
So people ignore homeless folks because all they can do is ask for credit without ever fulfilling it.
Some posts on HN are like that - they take up your time by sounding grandiose in this case and then you realize it's just nonsense and you feel like they've not re-paid that credit.
With homeless people, you know they won't pay back so you ignore them. With HN and other data aggregators, you take your chances. Sometimes, you give out so much credit without getting anything back, that you grow frustrated.
People refer to that as click-bait and there are many other forms of growing pains - some of them simply stemming from the fact that you can't please everyone.
Assuming this clears up the confusion you've had for 4 years, I've justified you reading this and earned some future credit :)
Perhaps this ties into the engineering mind, which can be very quick to spot potential issues. That's one primary way you make your living as an engineer, by spotting potential issues in a process or activity before they occur and mitigating them. But this can quickly turn into simple bashing of someone's work if we're not careful.
I've been a member for almost four years and I still haven't figured out what it is, but it makes me shake my head every time.