Essay is way more interesting than the title, which doesn't actually capture it.

The title seems perfectly engineered to get upvotes from people who don't read the article, which puts the article in front of more people who would actually read it (which is good because the article is, as you say, very interesting and worth sharing).

I don't like it but I can hardly blame them.

Agreed. Sometimes such rage/engagement-bait titles get changed on HN, but it's risky to do as a submitter cause it's unclear when you are "allowed" to change the title. And I suppose if you want upvotes, why would you change the ragebait title?

Usually engagement-bait titles are cover for uninteresting articles, but yeah in this case it's way more interesting than the title to me anyway.

i guess it makes it even more obvious when people are discussing the title instead of the actual piece, which is routine on HN but not always obvious! Although to be fair, the title describes one part of the piece, sure. the part with the least original insight.

Thanks for pointing this out—it made me take the time to find a sentence in the article body that could serve as a less baity title.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" (note that word unless)