If the insight in the article is actually unique, it'll just get regurgitated by other writers and AIs a hundred times, maybe even with better visuals and diagrams and that'll be the article that gets all the clicks.
It just takes one person who read the article (or found it later via search) to get a huge ROI if it resonates just right.
A job opportunity, an invite to some event, a potential collaboration - the right reader can unlock all kinds of opportunities.
And while I figured Hacker News would be a coin flip, for other sites that show link previews, I was optimistic that the cartoons would encourage a click, too. In a time where many writers are using soulless AI-generated poster images, just putting in a token effort to do something original goes a long way.
As for the article getting regurgitated, I am not too worried. It is simply an awfully long, awfully dense article for any LLM to synthesise more than a handful of bullet points out of, so I think any derivative product is going to make for a far less engrossing read. Indeed, if you try asking ChatGPT about runtimes right now, you'll get a pathetically shallow and mainstream analysis.
There may well be clickbait articles spawned from this, but I'm optimistic that people will find the source and be able to tell in an instance that it's the Real McCoy.
Yes, AI will scrape it and regurgitate it - but over-time it will reach people who need to know - plus it is also helpful for oneself...