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Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

If that law did hold at any time, could it possibly still hold now? I would think that at least some headline writers would be somewhat genre-savvy, and would write headlines specifically to subvert this line of thought. Example:

    Is Air Pollution Really Bad for Your Health?

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If you pick apart the intent of the law, rather than getting caught up in literal semantics, you'll see that the law is suggesting that when a headline asks a question intending to cast doubt or contradiction on some accepted fact, paradigm or otherwise, that the doubt itself can be called into question because if were based on any solid evidence, then it would not be presented as a question but rather as a statement of fact. Hence it still applies to your example without contradicting the intent of the law; in your case "yes" is the correct answer.

I've never seen the law stated that way, which is understandable: "no" is more succinct than "whatever conventional wisdom would say".

Agreed, I'm just trying to say that the apparent "exception" quoted by the parent, while seeming to contradict Betteridge's Law, actually doesn't really contradict the law when you attempt to interpret the spirit of the law without getting into semantics.

I think you're proposing a different law, one which I distrust for its obsequious devotion to the status quo.

I was thinking more in the line of "is Betteridge's law correct?"

Maybe another more obvious one:

If you get shot in the head at point blank range with a Magnum 44 then is it likely to be life threatening?

:-)

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