Again, if you have been on HN since 2009, you are likely on the far fringe of Google's user demographics, which at this point is pretty much "The average human being on Earth".

I would bet all of my money that you never once did a Google search (pre-LLM mania, but maybe even after) that looked like

"What kind of clothing is best for when you are going hiking around the lake, so my feet don't get so cold?"

Sadly, this is how most humans have used a search engine for decades now.

I find that weird assumption. Why would you expect HN people not do such searches? They worked for years.

And you frequently ended up finding a discussion forum with around that question and relevant discussion under it.

Because OG tech nerds would google like

Forum hiking warm socks backpacking trail running

Which was basically a structured programmatic query that activated the old google algo just right.

Fwiw, I do/did plain language searches for the last couple of years, following Google's lead - I think the more natural language searches have only really been in the last 5 years.

I often use terse searches too, mostly when I forget to write it out longhand to satisfy Google - but either way it's getting less wheat with my vat of chaff in the SERPs and several times recently I've had to re-phrase to get anything useful.