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Comment by rjkennedy98 | Hacker News Reader

This title is a prime example of what he denigrates in his essay. He should change it to: "I am 75% sure Strong Opinions Loosely Held Might Be the Worst Idea in Tech"

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> He should change it to: "I am 75% sure Strong Opinions Loosely Held Might Be the Worst Idea in Tech"

I'm fairly sure that you meant to say He should change it to: "I am 75% sure that 'Strong Opinions Loosely Held' is the Worst Idea in Tech"

Otherwise it's just double-qualified.

It's pure clickbait. "Worst X in Y" is one of the prototypical clickbait phrases.

Complete with a "click to tweet quote" to spoon-feed you the exact phrase that you should be sharing on social media.

A better way to fix it would be to stop talking about what's the "worst idea". That's just hyperbole; there's no need to compare bad ideas and choose which one is worst, and no serious attempt is made.

I'm pretty sure that the irony here was intended on the part of the author.

Why? The uncertainty is implied by the use of the word "might"

At least “might” is in there

Eh, I'm sure the version with "might" simply has a higher click-through rate than the version without. Uncertainty and ambiguity are key characteristics of clickbait.

No, the "might" is a necessary weasel-word that keeps the author's integrity safe from having made a (perhaps ludicrous) claim that is highly questionable or just wrong.

It is generally overread and therefore fairly neutral in terms of click-through. In cases where integrity is given up on, you won't find weasel words, e.g:

https://www.zergnet.com/

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