
Ask HN: The unreasonable effectiveness of certain headlines on Hacker News - omarhaneef
Certain headlings work really well such as:<p>The unreasonable effectiveness of X<p>n myths that people believe about X<p>These are the hacker news equivalents of<p>&quot;X happened. You won&#x27;t believe what happened next.&quot;<p>&quot;Do X with this one weird trick.&quot;<p>My question is:<p>1. Do you have other examples of these repeating, and successful headlines?<p>2. Why do they work?
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bjourne
"Air pollution is a big deal"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560916)
Didn't work very well.

Then someone posted "Air Pollution Reduces IQ, a Lot"
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/ai...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/air-
pollution-reduces-iq-a-lot.html) and it scored well despite being just a
rehash of Patrick Collison's blog post. :) The moderator dang since then has
changed the url and title to "The cognitive costs of air pollution"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565624)
Amazing! over 1000 points!

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sgillen
For the two examples you listed I think they work because they imply that the
article has some quick tips to “level up” as a developer. Either by adding a
new and powerful tool to their belt, or by dispelling some previous false
notion they have.

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latexr
I don’t recall seeing many of those on Hacker News, but it may be that they
have been renamed by the time I get to them.

What you’re asking about is known as “clickbait”. Search for that term and
you’ll find plenty of information. They work by putting us in a state of
anticipation, hijacking our dopamine reward system.

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Isamu
>The unreasonable effectiveness of X

These are just allusions to classic "unreasonable effectiveness" papers,
probably starting with

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences)

>n myths that people believe about X

Again there are well-known articles that specifically address programmer myths
and short-sightedness, generally a good topic.

Many people remember the original, well written articles and want to read more
of the same.

~~~
Isamu
Not quite the same as click bait.

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eb0la
"$(PropietarySoftwareCO) [is now using|adopts|champions]
$(OpenSourceTechnology)"

This works because there is an implict conflict.

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psv1
[Some-software-tool-or-library-that-you-already-know-and-use]... written in
Rust.

~~~
F-0X
Great articles for when you want to know how it works but want the code to
play hard to get.

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eb0la
Another patterns:

\- $(SHINY_NEW_TECH) [beats|as a better|replaces] $(OLD_TECH)

\- $(OLD_OR_BORING_TECH) beats $(SHINY_NEW_TECH) (because)

\- $(OLD__TECH) refuses to die

