I don't see the point in spending any effort helping out people who don't click the main link in an HN post.

You could equally say "It's not hard to click on the link at the top, to get context if there's a comment on HN you don't understand." It's a really low bar. Honestly, making HN a better place for people who aren't willing to click the link is just making HN a worse place for everyone else.

If I'm gonna burn time writing something clearly so anyone can understand it, it's gonna be on my blog, or answering questions on Stack Overflow, where that effort pays off. I know there are people on HN who dive straight into the comments without reading the article---I do that often enough---and it's not usually a big deal. However, if I don't understand a comment and haven't read the article, I'm not gonna blame the comment for that.

And being helpful to readers is helpful for getting your point across.