I believe the rule is against changing the title to make it more click-baity. (Or for any reason besides necessary shortening.) In this case the title of the original article was used unchanged.
The incentives are opposing; the original author wants clickbaity headlines, since it increases hit counts and therefore ad impressions, and ad income. HN readers would like descriptive (non-clickbaity) headlines so that they can choose not to click on a link.
My point is that "the author used a crappy title" doesn't mean submitters should get a pass on "no linkbait" rule (which as was pointed out, is actually a rule.)
I don't think they were being patronizing, just trying to answer your question as written. Without the context of this reply I wasn't sure of your point either.
I should have looked up the rule though - from that other comment it does indeed appear that changing the title is allowed if the original title is clickbait. In this case though (without a subtitle or obvious other alternative), I assume the OP decided it was best to stick with the original.
