[wffurr]

Thanks for summarizing the talk so concisely.

Maybe read it before commenting next time.

I wish HN had a feature where it could detect that you clicked the link and disallowed commenting before that. At the very least you’d have to click the link, even if you just immediately click back without reading, and you’d know what you were doing was circumventing the spirit of the place.

[corytheboyd]

Interesting idea! Maybe instead of preventing you from commenting entirely, it just tagged all comments you leave as “have not read article”. I think the shame approach would actually work, but too many people would vehemently reject it for it to ever work.

[zbuf]

Perhaps just annotate each comment with how many minutes between clicking the link and making the comment (similar to the green usernames)

That way the reader can decide for themselves. I'm less inclined to object to hasty responses to discussion points than I am to top level comments, but that's just personal choice.

[trestenhortz]

“Choose Boring Technology” is an absolute statement. It’s a mantra. A meme. It demands you follow its lead.

It’s an order from the top. A commandment. A clear requirement. A statement of belief for the masses to follow.

It’s an unequivocal statement, a perfectly confident directive telling you precisely what to do without the slightest equivocation.

It’s not “read this powerful headline but then please read the in depth article only to find we don’t actually mean what is said in the headline, we mean something more nuanced and subtle why did you take our headline seriously?”

[wffurr]

So a sufficiently compelling headline goes one step beyond intriguing your curiosity into clicking, it substitutes for the author's entire argument?

Amazing bit of self-justification you have there.

If you want to argue against what the author wrote, by all means. If you intend to argue against a straw man you have concocted out of a three word title, then you will seem a fool.