HN is aimed at an engineering audience, not a political one. I, and others like me (at least used to) come here for enlightenment, not rhetoric.
Moreover, the article itself is not argumentative. It didn’t need to be spiced up with a provocative title to be valuable.
It doesn't matter if you're writing an opinion piece, a political piece, or a technical piece, if you want to structure your writing in a way that can be easily read, understood, and followed, you want to obey the principles of rhetoric.
i.e. strict pedants with no comprehension of/tolerance for ambiguity or emotion?
Yes it did. HN title-fu is the same appeal to emotion as any political blog and is just as effective at surfacing stories, thanks to people just like you.
You came to this thread and made your noise for pedantic reasons and helped surface it higher so the correct audience could actually see it