The unreasonable effectiveness of X
n myths that people believe about X
These are the hacker news equivalents of
"X happened. You won't believe what happened next."
"Do X with this one weird trick."
My question is:
1. Do you have other examples of these repeating, and successful headlines?
2. Why do they work?
Then someone posted "Air Pollution Reduces IQ, a Lot" https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/ai... and it scored well despite being just a rehash of Patrick Collison's blog post. :) The moderator dang since then has changed the url and title to "The cognitive costs of air pollution" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565624 Amazing! over 1000 points!
What you’re asking about is known as “clickbait”. Search for that term and you’ll find plenty of information. They work by putting us in a state of anticipation, hijacking our dopamine reward system.
These are just allusions to classic "unreasonable effectiveness" papers, probably starting with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...
>n myths that people believe about X
Again there are well-known articles that specifically address programmer myths and short-sightedness, generally a good topic.
Many people remember the original, well written articles and want to read more of the same.
This works because there is an implict conflict.
- $(SHINY_NEW_TECH) [beats|as a better|replaces] $(OLD_TECH)
- $(OLD_OR_BORING_TECH) beats $(SHINY_NEW_TECH) (because)
- $(OLD__TECH) refuses to die