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I cannot express how much I hate these posts. I read the headline and I'm getting all curious and want to know the answer. But hell no: "The route setter studie
by krick 11y ago
I cannot express how much I hate these posts. I read the headline and I'm getting all curious and want to know the answer. But hell no: "The route setter studied the blank gray surface." and I already know the ⅘ of the text will be pouring water, like telling me it was "a Tuesday in early June" and what climbing holds were being made of in 1985 or something. So I'm left with the choice: read it all or give it up after I'm already intrigued. Are these journalists being paid by word or they're just honestly thinking they are Scott goddamn Fitzgerald?
Worse than that, this particular post doesn't even quite answer the question. Turns out it's pretty much of an art without any rules.
- samstave 11y agoThat's F. Scott goddamn Fitzgerald to you! How dare you even attempt short me one character! But I agree with you otherwise!
- imh 11y agoI distinctly remember this one as an offender in unnecessary language. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2015/09/28/whence-function-notation/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2015/09/28/whence-func...
- forrestthewoods 11y agoHaha I know exactly what you mean. Current internet longform is super masturbatory. I hate it. So many articles draw me in with a interesting subject matter only for the first three pages to have literally nothing to do with said subject.
- throwawaymaroon 11y agoSomeone requires that all information be codified for his digestion in particular and gets crabby. You probably cannot express your hatred because that'd require the writing skills you deride.
- dennisnedry 11y agoTypical fluff piece. Let's face it, bouldering (setting) is pretty boring, the writer has to make it seem "more exciting" than it actually is.
- highstep 11y agoAs a non-professional route setter I disagree - it's actually a very interesting activity that is part science and part art. It involves a lot of contemplation in the area of physics, body mechanics, and psychology. Additionally it's a lot like game design in that the problem you create will be interacted with extensive, obsessively and can result in significant challenge, reward and frustration by the user. But I'll admit I didn't read the article, because big media almost always does a terrible job at covering climbing... let alone a niche of climbing that has taken years of practice to understand and appreciate.
- shoo 11y agoanecdotally, one of my older relatives who is into climbing said he knew a mathematician/climber who was pretty good at analysing various possible routes and planning a good route while climbing. so, maybe we can proceed by not reading the article and theorising in a vaccuum. maybe one way to formalise this is some kind of (adversarial?) game, where one player designs the course, and the other player tries to find a good route through the course, where we quantify "good" somehow.
- clarkm 11y agoYeah, at least with The New Yorker I know what I'm getting myself into. And the authors there are mostly well-established and familiar enough that I can trust there to be some insight buried within the human interest asides. But with pieces like this I can't take that risk.