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Walter maybe I am missing something here, but in what sense is the statement "people are smarter than dogs" not literally true?
Babies are not smarter than dogs, but they are certainly people. There are also people in vegetative states.
"Babies" the group are smarter than any dog too :)
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One approach to resolving this would be to not make statements that are literally not true and to correct statements that are literally not true to not be literally not true.
That creates bland writing and the process of correcting every little deviation is so pedantic that it provides a strong incentive to stop writing. Both of these problems result in a world where we learn less, grow less, and take fewer risks with our writing. What is wrong with truly being charitable, assuming the absolute best intentions and giving writers the license to deviate a little to let them make a point?
What is wrong with not writing blatantly false statements or calling out wrong statements for being wrong (or, asking for a correction)?
There is a reason compilers cannot take arbitrary text and produce the program you are 'actually' thinking of.
A great quote from the article: "The defensive writing style also encourages another sort of ugliness, which is that “avoiding saying something wrong” becomes a primary focus of the writing, rather than communicating or exploring ideas which the author might himself be unsure of." One thing that's great about Gwern Branwen's writing is that Gwern's essays are accompanied by a "belief tag". That tag gives the ability…
It's one of the surprising side-effects of the Internet that anything whatsoever you might say in a public forum can potentially offend someone, somewhere, somehow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Walter maybe I am missing something here, but in what sense is the statement "people are smarter than dogs" not literally true?
Babies are not smarter than dogs, but they are certainly people. There are also people in vegetative states.
What value is there in such a statement: This dog is at least as smart as this baby?
What does smart even mean?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Babies are not smarter than dogs, but they are certainly people. There are also people in vegetative states.
Walter you used a capital P. This means the group, not individual people. "People" the group are smarter than any "dog". "Babies" the group are smarter than any dog too :)
The top voted comment on it is incredibly dismissive, completely dismissing my 6-ish years of college, more than 5 years working in insurance, etc. over one detail that wasn't thoroughly researched and was, in fact, framed to admit that it was kind of hand-wavy. I don't think what I said was entirely wrong and stupid, but it wasn't 100% accurate.
(HN item in question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819091)
But I think I have two choices here:
I can be completely bummed that one person chose to completely dismiss everything based on one not perfect remark in the piece and others upvoted that. Or I can value the upvotes the item got, the amount of meaningful discussion it did generate, the page views it got, and the constructive feedback that tells me that if I want to write more on this topic, I need to do a bit more research and firm up my ability to defend my points or random asshats are going to say "Well, based on one single detail, nothing she says can possibly have any merit."
But, hey, I have done similar things myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828054 So, maybe people doing that isn't all asshattery. Maybe it is more complicated than that and when someone tells you "x detail makes me not read/believe/whatever any of it", then that is constructive feedback that you can choose to try to learn something from so you can improve your writing -- or not, as you see fit.
I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to express myself effectively online. I think part of the challenge is that a) your audience is incredibly diverse, so lazy writing habits that are rife with unquestioned assumptions which may be racist, sexist, etc are going to get called out online even though your personal circle of friends wouldn't have a problem with it (because they are also kind of racist, sexist, whatever) and b) you are talking to people who may know more than you about some piece of it and/or can google up info, either to fact check or just to rebut because they don't like you, don't agree with your point, just got dumped, are IUI (Internetting Under The Influence) or for any damn reason.
So, in addition to readers perhaps needing to try to "find the insight, not the error," authors can also try to focus more on the metrics that make them feel positive about having written it rather than focusing on the comments that make them cringe.
It took some self control at first, but I am finding that my experience of the Internet is much better now that I focus more on counting the positives and, as much as possible, ignoring the negatives. It does involve some judgment calls. You can't just turn the other cheek on everything. There are situations where you need to correct people or clarify your meaning or defend your statement. But if you are getting traffic and getting comments, even if some of them are ugly, then you accomplished something.
I am trying harder to decide what I want to accomplish, keeping my eye on evidence that I am moving that goal forward, and not expecting some "perfect" experience (for lack of a better way of saying that, as I have other things to do and this comment has gone on long enough).
As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick. Coming up with counter-examples is the default response. Instead, I try to say a supporting example first. This helps me learn from other people's point of view. Edit: Though I admit I don't do the best job on HN. :/
This is just not true. You are not 'hard wired' to react in such a specific manner, and being an engineer does not mean ripping things apart.
You may be an engineer and choose to make a joke about something. You may be an engineer and something may make you go off and learn about something you didn't know about before. You may be an engineer and react in all sorts of ways to soemthing, nitpick is only one possible outcome.