Because rational people like to think people are rational. Rational people then go on and write their great sci fi works.

People writing satire know people are irrational. Otherwise they wouldn't be writing satire, would they?

To quote George Carlin: Take an average idiot on the street, then realize half of people are dumber than them.

GPT-3 says: In mathematics, there is a search for a satire-to-satire mapping function with the longest cycle length. These are called N-quines.

I mean, it's not A Modest Proposal, but Onion articles are still actually article length. I know most people just read and share the headline, but they're still taking the time to do full write-ups.