Does every question mark deserve a Betteridge?

An essay that may or may not reach a firm conclusion

dynomight.net/betteridge

To blog is to get dunked on. I accept this. I even sometimes wonder if I should be grateful, as I suspect my willingness to get dunked on may represent a kind of comparative advantage. (You can tell yourself that if you try to placate the haters, you’ll just ruin things for people who like you. But how do you feel when you’re staring down barrel of a 127 comment thread full of people debating how it’s possible that you’re such an idiot?)

Still, there’s one particular species of dunking that puzzles me. For context, Betteridge’s law states:¹

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

This is often employed as a sick burn, as in, You titled your article ‘Is this the world’s first gay caveman?’ because it’s not the world’s first gay caveman but you wanted it to be, because you want attention, you are so bad, har-har.”

But I don’t quite understand the rules. Can someone explain the rules?

Question 1: Are question marks in titles always bad?

I’m just checking. I suppose I could see the logic, e.g. if you strongly feel that the bottom line should always come right up front. But I’m pretty sure that’s not the rule, because “this title used a question mark” is not regarded as a sick burn.

Question 2: Are question marks only OK if the essay ends with a full-throated “yes”?

Sometimes it does seem like this is the rule. But it’s strange. If it were universally enforced, we could all mentally convert “Do blue-blocking glasses improve sleep?” into “Yes, blue-blocking glasses really do improve sleep!” But then, of what use was the question mark? Why not just say they’re always bad?

If we’re going to allow questions that are actual questions, then it has to be possible for the answer to sometimes be something other than yes. On the other hand…

Question 3: Is Betteridge’s law useful at all?

I think so. At minimum, you can think of it as a convenient label for this theory:

1. Traditionally, news articles are written with the bottom line up front.

2. Traditionally, news articles have incentives to make a clear affirmative statement in the headline.

3. So if a news article uses a question, that’s because they couldn’t justify making a clear affirmative statement.

I don’t think this theory is 100% accurate. But it’s accurate enough to deserve a name. (On the whole, more theories should have names.) Still, Betteridge’s law isn’t usually invoked as a neutral observation about the forces that led to a given title. It’s usually invoked as a dunk. So…

Question 4: Is Betteridge dunking ever appropriate?

Again, I think it is. Here are some of the best/worst examples from John Rentoul’s book, “Questions to Which the Answer Is No!”:

• “Will Guam capsize?”

• “Is Osama Bin Laden in Chicago?”

• “Did Jesus foresee the US Constitution?”

• “Des smartphones bientôt équipés d’airbags?”

I think we can agree something is wrong with these. But what, exactly?

Question 5: Is it central that the answer is “no”?

Consider these made-up titles:

• “Is the Pope still Catholic?”

• “Do you need to sleep every day?”

• “Did Lincoln have personal qualms about slavery?”

• “Did the Rubicon even exist back when Caesar supposedly crossed it?”

These are anti-Betteridges. The answer is yes, but the title is irritating in the same way: It gives the impression of a live debate when none exists.

Question 6: What’s really going on here?

I think it’s pretty clear. Consider the title:

Is aspartame bad for you?

If you understood it to be a settled question that aspartame is safe, and the article ultimately concludes that aspartame is safe, then you might find that title annoying. On the other hand, if you understood it to be settled that aspartame is bad for you, and the article confirms that yes indeed it is bad for you, then you also might find that title annoying.

The answer is immaterial. What’s irritating is when a title suggests a novel, interesting possibility that the article does not substantiate as worthy of attention.

Question 7: So what’s the problem?

Here’s a proposition: The modern internet rewards people for being overconfident. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people with blogs are not constrained by the norms of traditional newspapers. On the contrary, if you start a blog, you will soon learn that the best way to get attention is to write spicy aggressive titles like, “No, creatine does not make you smarter despite what all the stupid dumb mouth-breathing supplement hucksters may tell you.”

Now, I do think you should say what you actually believe. If you truly are that confident, I want you to tell me, not bullshit me by pretending to be neutral.

However, the internet corrupts all of us. Many people seem to start out with a public persona that is careful and measured and calm. But over time, they’re gradually sculpted by the Reward Function into something quite different. The degree this happens depends on your personality, where you’re competing for attention² and how much you try to resist. But I don’t think anyone is truly above this.

Still, we should try to resist. My favorite kind of essay is, “Lucid examination of all sides of an issue which finds some evidence pointing in various directions and doesn’t reach a definitive conclusion because the world is complicated.” And I think the fundamental goal of a title should be to accurately signal the contents. But how is such an essay supposed to signal what it is, if not by using a question?

Question 8: What should a title do?

One theory is that question titles are sort of like lists: A thing with strong fundamental merits that has been rendered suspicious by abuse. Under this theory, we should push back against all the Betteridgeing and insist that question titles are fine when the question is genuinely open, regardless of the answer, and that people are wrong to Betteridge unless the question mark is being abused.

As far as I can tell, that’s the only internally consistent theory that doesn’t amount to saying that question titles should be forbidden. A slightly more conciliatory version would be that if you use a question mark, it’s your responsibility to demonstrate that it’s a real question, not something you made up.

I lean towards that theory. But part of me—a minority—thinks that perhaps question titles should be effectively forbidden. I thought I’d do a little reductio ad absurdum by trying to give this post an accurate non-question title. The best things I could think of were, “Hesitantly against over-broad Betteridge dunking” and “I weakly think excessive Betteridge dunking disincentivizes fairly examining all sides of an issue.” At first, I thought those were amusingly terrible. But are they, really?

PS. Was Rentoul’s book correct to list, “Should we clone Neanderthals?” as an example of a question to which the answer is no?

1. Implicitly, this applies only to yes/no questions. “How long should you brew your tea?” should not be answered with “no”.

2. Hi Twitter.