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> his strategy for manipulating human attention has been correct.

"Correct" is not the word you're looking for here. More like "very effective". His strategy for manipulating human attention is very effective, but the correctness of his strategy isn't relevant here, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up.

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Because a sincere discussion of media (a fundamentally insincere medium with perverse incentives) is silly without addressing this.

Autistically pretending the world is rational and not factoring this in is just as false as Zitron’s predictions.

Nothing in acknowledging those perverse incentives requires that one misleadingly use the word “correct” in place of “effective”.

This is the most bizarre and trivial line of argument I’ve ever seen on HN.

Swapping those words changes nothing about that sentence.

They aren't synonyms and are, in general, not interchangeable. If I'm trying to get out of an unpleasant task by intentionally failing an aptitude test, the "correct" answer is going to be the least effective. Likewise if I'm crafting a click-bait headline or trying to make use of Cunningham's Law or... well, I hope you get the point.

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