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Comment by boeyms | Hacker News Reader

I don't see why this is a problem. I am reminded of a comment that a friend once made to the following effect: information theory tells us that redundancy is the only way to guarantee transmission of information across over a noisy channel.

I think he said that this came from the preface of a mathematics textbook, where the author used this to criticise what he therefore viewed as the unhelpful parsimony of many textbooks, but I think that the point holds in general.

Of course, the style in which repetition is done may still be criticised for poor aesthetics, but I don't see an aesthetic problem here either.

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Indeed, stating everything twice is a basic concept in education.

At least twice. "Twice" is the absolute minimum, and there are better or worse ways to do it, but anything you only say once is only useful for a reference text.

Repetition is also heavily employed in marketing. Why does the same brand run the same commercials over and over, every commercial break, sometimes for years at a time? Why do you see billboards, signage, and corporate sponsorships whose only goal is to get you to see a specific logo repeatedly? Radio commercials will often repeat the same line 4-5 times in a row, literally. Why do politicians post signs showing just their names and the position they're running for in every conceivable nook and cranny? It's obviously not about convincing you that they're most the qualified candidate, as the sign makes no argument.

Repetition certainly seems like an extremely effective method for drilling something into someone's subconscious, even if that person is making overt assertions that the brand's pervasiveness annoys them. I would guess that people have a natural bias toward things they recognize, so even if one thinks he/she is annoyed, they're still more likely to patronize the most familiar identity. I'd be interested in reading a more thorough treatment of this topic.

I love this observation! I would be interested if anyone could dig up what text book that came from.

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