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Comment by wizerdrobe | Hacker News Reader

TFA is very well written, but in almost every reproduction of the Monty Hall problem you’ll find it very poorly written such that one would reasonably be led to believe the question is “if I have two doors what is the probability.”

Don’t believe me, go search for memes presenting the problem. It’s been on the internet for decades at this point.

The setup is near always to send a poor rewrite then link you to a story of Marilyn von Savant when you get 50-50. It’s an age old internet troll.

I think this story in its entirety says a lot about ignoring the importance of good technical writing… and how people on the internet love tricking others to feel “right.”

Of the cited hate mail Savant received, I have to wonder how many were setup with poor writing on the topic.

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> Of the cited hate mail Savant received, I have to wonder how many were setup with poor writing on the topic.

Have you spent at least equal time considering, given the tenor of much of it, how many were instead willingly exposing their simple misogyny?

You might be a bit younger than me, but I remember this well, and I remember this being one of my first introductions into the idea that men who are wrong will lash out with misogyny if it is a woman who proves their ignorance. Even academics.

Interestingly I’ve correctly grow up more recently such that I instead see internet simps here rather than academic misogny as notable, seeing as the tables have largely socially turned since your (I assume by the username) birth year of 1875.

Yes indeed. I and others surely see from this comment that you're a fully mature thinker.

> how people on the internet love tricking others to feel “right.”

I guess it all depends on your perspective. I see a lot more people on the internet piling on with nitpicks to avoid feeling "wrong."

> Of the cited hate mail Savant received, I have to wonder how many were setup with poor writing on the topic.

The article includes the specific wording that Savant used in her column. It seems pretty clear.

> I think this story in its entirety says a lot about ignoring the importance of good technical writing… and how people on the internet love tricking others to feel “right.”

... or, since the column that provoked all hate mail was in 1990 and people saw it in print publications, perhaps it says very little about the internet. And given the higher effort of writing an actual letter to Savant then vs now, it says that people's desire to "correct" a woman is pretty high.

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