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Betteridge's "Law of Headlines" suggests this headline was written in the form of a question in order to answer it in the negative: > "Any headline which ends
by cs702 6y ago
Betteridge's "Law of Headlines" suggests this headline was written in the form of a question in order to answer it in the negative:
> "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no.' The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."[a]
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- smnrchrds 6y agoIs the title editorialized or has the publication changed it? As of now, the publication's title is "Why venture capital doesn’t build the things we really need", but the submission's is "Is venture capital producing the kinds of inventions society needs?".
- cs702 6y agoHuh, you're right. It could also be that the publication changed the headline or is showing different headlines to different audiences (I've seen the latter happen), but as of now only the HN headline is editorialized that way.
- dang 6y agoI changed it for reasons I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655803. The article title is misleading. However, since now it's triggering the Betteridge reflex, and people are reacting purely to the title, I've reverted the edit. If anyone reads the article thoughtfully they will see that the answer to the question can only be "yes and no", but we can't expect that.