Just a friendly observation from a third party that this particular thread has in fact gone meta about HN, commenter behavior, and the site rules. Which are pretty clear.
I wonder if it may be the case that these rules have good reason to exist, and if so, then the discussion you are looking for seems to have happened at least once before, a long time ago.
It has been addressed many times and there doesn't seem to be an obvious way of further addressing it beside doing exactly what the receipts-for-downvotes people want. Neither the mods nor most HN users want that, though and the arguments against it remain compelling.
I wonder if it may be the case that these rules have good reason to exist, and if so, then the discussion you are looking for seems to have happened at least once before, a long time ago.