It's a really sad commentary on our society, and specifically the HN community, when a headline framed as a question (a no-no in Journalism 101) gets traction. Great response.

I agree the headline does read like that of a fluff piece, but the article is considered, and it does quantify & address the question in the headline. I guess what I'm saying is that if your attention is grabbed by the headline, then you won't be disappointed by the article - in this case.

Headlines are supposed to convey the thrust, not nuance. There's no false advertising.

Your basic complaint is that concise and sharp headlines do better than detailed, dull ones? Welcome to humanity.

I've decided to put your theory to the test:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=771303

For the record, I think Doug Engelbart is an absolutely amazing visionary and a person to who we all owe more than we probably are aware of.

That's false advertising. The original story was about whether Taleb is a crank. It also offered a useful and interesting definition of a crank.

You're annoyed that sharp rather than nice fluffy headlines work. You know what I'm annoyed about? How pointless meta-whining like this floats to the top. I was looking forward to hearing from some finance savvy types.

No, I'm annoyed at the "is X a Y ?" format that seems to be the new headline 'meme'.

To call people names in order to attract attention to your 'prose' (I use the word lightly) is a pretty low tactic.

It's false advertising just the same, because X really isn't a crank or X would be spending his time in an institution with rubber walls.

Disagreement does not have to be expressed in such terms.

> No, I'm annoyed at the "is X a Y ?" format that seems to be the new headline 'meme'.

It's been the "meme" in far more than HN headlines for years, though.

Coming up, are swing sets potentially hazardous for your children? That and more, after the break.

Even though we all know what the "answer" is, the fact that it's phrased as a question activates some stupid part of our lizard brains that will keep us glued to the tube.

> It's been the "meme" in far more than HN headlines for years, though.

That is true.

But I'd hope for HN to be populated by people that have a larger part of their brain switched on than the 'lizards' portion of it and a glut in this type of titles in the last week or so is what prompted my post.

I did up moderate your post but I'd mention that there are other posts in the thread that deal with the substance of the argument. I don't know if they're "savy" but if you comment on them, it might move them closer to the top.