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The problem with several of the arguments made in this article is they are [at least initially] made as absolute statements. Documentation is always bad. Config

The problem with several of the arguments made in this article is they are [at least initially] made as absolute statements. Documentation is always bad. Configuration is wrong. People are lazy idiots. It certainly baits more people into response than a moderate argument but I'd rather see that version than see other programmers cite this one as a reason to document nothing. That's much worse.

derefr 11y ago
I've never quite understood the point in "moderating" the arguments in a persuasive essay. If you are trying to convince someone who's at -100 on a spectrum, of a view that's all the way up at +100, then—even if you make the best points ever and completely "win them over" during the argument—you'll maybe only sway their day-to-day view to being -50, or possibly as high as 0. If you tell someone who thinks the sky is blue that it's red, then they'll end up believing it's purple. If you try to convince them that it's purple, though, then they'll probably think it's far closer to blue than you meant. If you want them to see the sky as purple, then you have to insist it's red. It's sort of a Red Queen problem: people know others use hyperbole and absolutes to make rhetorical points. So, when listening to an argument, people internally temper every point they hear to "remove" the rhetorical effect. Thus, when trying to make a point, you need the hyperbole and absolutes—because even without them, people will still assume they're there anyway, and "temper" your point into nothingness. This isn't to say that personal opinions need to be expressed in such absolutist terms to have impact, though. When you're giving your opinion, you're just telling people where you are on the spectrum. A reader can pretty easily tell—usually from the different writing style—what's rhetoric and what's personal thought; and while people engage with (i.e. debate with) rhetoric, they compare themselves to opinion. When I say "I think the sky is purple", that's not an argument; that's a way of letting you know that if you think the sky is purple too, you've got someone to discuss that with. HN seems to really like anecdote-rich "humble" presentations of (opinionated!) personal experience, but the persuasive essay has an important place as well. For every Folklore.org, there's a Unix Hater's Handbook. And although Folklore.org is certainly entertaining, I've never really seen a productive debate stem from a post there—certainly never anything that inspired someone to code up a new project to prove their point.

derefr 11y ago

I've never quite understood the point in "moderating" the arguments in a persuasive essay. If you are trying to convince someone who's at -100 on a spectrum, of a view that's all the way up at +100, then—even if you make the best points ever and completely "win them over" during the argument—you'll maybe only sway their day-to-day view to being -50, or possibly as high as 0. If you tell someone who thinks the sky is blue that it's red, then they'll end up believing it's purple. If you try to convince them that it's purple, though, then they'll probably think it's far closer to blue than you meant. If you want them to see the sky as purple, then you have to insist it's red. It's sort of a Red Queen problem: people know others use hyperbole and absolutes to make rhetorical points. So, when listening to an argument, people internally temper every point they hear to "remove" the rhetorical effect. Thus, when trying to make a point, you need the hyperbole and absolutes—because even without them, people will still assume they're there anyway, and "temper" your point into nothingness. This isn't to say that personal opinions need to be expressed in such absolutist terms to have impact, though. When you're giving your opinion, you're just telling people where you are on the spectrum. A reader can pretty easily tell—usually from the different writing style—what's rhetoric and what's personal thought; and while people engage with (i.e. debate with) rhetoric, they compare themselves to opinion. When I say "I think the sky is purple", that's not an argument; that's a way of letting you know that if you think the sky is purple too, you've got someone to discuss that with. HN seems to really like anecdote-rich "humble" presentations of (opinionated!) personal experience, but the persuasive essay has an important place as well. For every Folklore.org, there's a Unix Hater's Handbook. And although Folklore.org is certainly entertaining, I've never really seen a productive debate stem from a post there—certainly never anything that inspired someone to code up a new project to prove their point.