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Typically when someone posts a baiting title like that I know not to trust them. Scholarship and evidence don't need hyperbolic headlines.
by keithwarren 14y ago
Typically when someone posts a baiting title like that I know not to trust them. Scholarship and evidence don't need hyperbolic headlines.
- ColinWright 14y agoI think you are mistaken. In today's attention economy even the very best scholarship and the very best evidence-based conclusions will be completely ignored unless there is a hook to get people, preferably lots of people, to read it. Even here on the allegedly rational Hacker News I've seen item after item sink without trace, whereas others with significantly fewer details and significantly worse evidence get voted up and read by thousands. Alex Bellos recently passed on to me what his editor told him. It doesn't matter how good your article is, if no one reads it, or if no one gets to the point, it's no use and a waste of your time. I'd like to think "Scholarship and evidence don't need hyperbolic headlines." Sadly, I think that scholarship and evidence say otherwise.
- Evbn 14y agoWhen is HN alleged to be rational?
- pfortuny 14y agoBut being newsworthy does and this man wants to be newsworthy apart from trying to convey a message (which may be right, may be wrong, but he is not Bill Gates). And really you would be amazed at the titles (and abstracts) of papers in journals of Pure Mathematics. Really. I've seen thing you people would't believe.