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I agree 100% that authors should be very sure before making aggressive/clickbaity/bold claims (and I take a slightly perverse pleasure in cutting wild claims do

by dbaupp 10y ago

I agree 100% that authors should be very sure before making aggressive/clickbaity/bold claims (and I take a slightly perverse pleasure in cutting wild claims down to size, like this case), but (a) as an author, it can be hard to distinguish whether one is very sure about a true thing, or very sure about a false thing (which is why things like kibwen's offer of proof-reading is good), and (b) once the mistake is made, how should the author respond? The parent comment seems to making a deal of the author crossing out the claims after the mistake was pointed out, as if there was something else they could do?! The blog would've been much better if it had been written in a less confrontational style, so the mistake becomes more of a learning experience for everyone instead of this finger-pointing match.

kibwen 10y ago
> I take a slightly perverse pleasure in cutting wild claims down to size I want you to know how much I appreciate this, Huon. :)
nebabyte 10y ago
> The blog would've been much better if it had been written in a less confrontational style, so the mistake becomes more of a learning experience for everyone instead of this finger-pointing match. I wholeheartedly agree, both in this specific instance and in general. There's a reason experienced learners generally (in my experience) take a non-assumptive/non-assertive tone. When you've learned enough times how little you know, you've somewhat trained yourself to be open to learning sooner than trying to assert what you 'knew' as certainty. Though the latter tends to be a more comforting notion, the idea that you "have the measure of things;" when your 'being wrong' leads to a misprediction or failure, and you wish to transition to 'knowing' what was correct with grace, which is easier when you 'weren't being a dick about it', i.e. being nonconfrontational. I like to think of this SMBC graph on knowledge in relation to this. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2177 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2177

by dbaupp 10y ago

kibwen 10y ago

> I take a slightly perverse pleasure in cutting wild claims down to size I want you to know how much I appreciate this, Huon. :)

nebabyte 10y ago

> The blog would've been much better if it had been written in a less confrontational style, so the mistake becomes more of a learning experience for everyone instead of this finger-pointing match. I wholeheartedly agree, both in this specific instance and in general. There's a reason experienced learners generally (in my experience) take a non-assumptive/non-assertive tone. When you've learned enough times how little you know, you've somewhat trained yourself to be open to learning sooner than trying to assert what you 'knew' as certainty. Though the latter tends to be a more comforting notion, the idea that you "have the measure of things;" when your 'being wrong' leads to a misprediction or failure, and you wish to transition to 'knowing' what was correct with grace, which is easier when you 'weren't being a dick about it', i.e. being nonconfrontational. I like to think of this SMBC graph on knowledge in relation to this. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2177 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2177