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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

>"If you’re trying a new diet, attempting to quit smoking or changing any daily routine, don’t expect new habits to be created in a week, or two or even three. Research suggests that the process requires 66 days (on average) and up to 8 months."

Something about the title suggested it was going to be much less than 21 days; maybe it's the domain name biasing my reading of the title.

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I agree that the title implies (or even declares) that it takes fewer than 21 days. I'd argue that the articles says that it does take those 21 days, plus many more, making the title deceptive.

Exactly, English semantics dictate that if it takes more than 21 days it must first take 21 days.

There is a very clearly implied only in the title. I agree that it should be included but it is unnecessary to convey the meaning imo.

There is not. I too assumed it must mean it takes less, otherwise there would be an "only", or "It takes more than".

I wonder what bias I have that made me read the title and assume "Huh, must be way longer" then?

I assumed it would take longer than 21 Days based on the title alone.

How I understood it, “form” here means that a habit has been formed.

As in: “Habits aren’t formed in 21 days“, just like “Rome wasn’t built in one day”.

Effort is usually quoted as a minimum ("It takes 20 minutes to drive there" "It costs $100 to buy this") which leads to a strange quirk that the negative is then interpreted as being a lower minimum, rather than a higher one ("It does not take 20min to drive there, "it does not cost $100 to buy this")

Your examples make me wonder if the language of marketing has changed our assumptions about implied meanings where otherwise we'd recognize ambiguity.

Or perhaps, marketing aside, it is just human nature to conjure implicit meaning rather than be confronted with ambiguity.

There's a tendency sometimes to leave certain words implicit. "It does not [even] take 21 days to form a habit." Some of those linguistic habits never leave their birthplace, giving you colloquialisms like "do you want to come with [us]" in the Midwest. Most don't have any regional association though, and sentences with dropped fragments sound perfectly normal, with your mind filling in the gaps.

In this case, the sentence is correct (though ambiguous) as written, but it has the same words you often see from a longer phrase with an omitted word implied through tone and other vocal cues, a pattern used commonly enough that I'd wager most people interpret it the same as you.

"Do you want to come with" is a Midwest colloquialism?? Wow I say it all the time. Very weird to find out.

It has Germanic roots too. Are any of the people you were close to growing up from the Midwest or from sort of Germanic or Scandinavian background?

I associate it with the movie Clueless / "Valley Girl" speak.

Yeah same here. I think it's because (most of the time) headlines are optimized for sentiment. I would have expected a title like "It takes more than 21 days..." to indicate it takes more

But it doesn't necessarily take more than 21 days. According to the linked article, the average modeled time to plateau was 66 days, but the range was from 18 to 254 days.

I had the same reaction. I think I'm just used to seeing headlines oversell their point.

Glad it wasn't just me.

I have to think the research shows tighter distributions for some forms of habit?

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