No, I don't agree it's the norm. There is though a general tendency to opine with strong views on subjects posters have no expertise on. I think that's because many are software engineers (or equivalent) and they are used to being expected to "wing it" on whatever technical subject comes up. On the other hand you can always find informed comments by users who have specialist knowledge.
And there's plenty of pushback on here about the chess thing besides your very valid points.
EDIT: anyway if I can offer a bit of unsolicited advice, it won't do you or anyone any good to accuse everyone who doesn't agree with you of laziness, even if you can see e.g. they haven't really read an article. Just say the thing you wan to say and let them figure it out. Most people will appreciate that much better and you will feel better about yourself for acting like a mature adult.
It's even in the site guidelines:
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
It's not been my personal experience on this website in the last 2-3 years atleast, pre-covid perhaps.
But despite that you aren't wrong and the only reason I even visit this website is because people sometimes did/do take time to reflect on things based on their experience and knowledge.
And in hindsight pointing out that hn has issues wasn't even the point but I feel frustrated when everyone is readily agreeing to things on here without reading. When that in this moment feels like the one thing that separates humans from machines that we get to think and learn.
I possibly should just drop reading this place until we have most noisy people go away. I have for one tried to always only comment on things where I could be a value add, this one does feel like I could I have done better.
In the moment I probably thought if they are GM level and I can beat them, is this some interesting find, my disappointment honestly led me to making a rather incorrect call on this one.
Either way I still do think HN as a whole has devolved into mindless herd follower mindset, I can point to more than a few posts that just say adopt the hacker mindset aka move fast don't care about the consequences.
And I for one find this laughable even though that's the reality of my job/work as well.