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What about the merits of what Doctorow has written? I'm not sure his background is terribly relevant here. What if PG had written this piece and it was a defens

by strick 16y ago

What about the merits of what Doctorow has written? I'm not sure his background is terribly relevant here. What if PG had written this piece and it was a defense of someone who invested lots of time and energy reading HN articles and making comments? Would you then agree "That guy has too much spare time"?

dkarl 16y ago
I think Doctorow assumes a lot about the motivations and the depth of thought of a person who says, "He has too much time on his hands." The real substitute for thought is Doctorow's dismissal of critical judgment: "But who can say what? Who can say which technologies and movements will be the enduring delights of generations to come, subject of PhD theses and documentary films, and which ones will be merely charming but obscure footnotes?" Who can say? We can say. We have to decide what's worth our time and what's not. We pass judgment on other people's work. We'll be wrong much of the time, but turning off our critical faculty altogether is worse than being wrong. At least "too much time on his hands" is a statement that can become the basis for a conversation, if you give the speaker some credit instead of assuming his statement is a "substitute for thought." The speaker might be prepared to expand on his opinion if someone wants to hear it. Anyway, a person who sees no value in something is irrelevant to its future. Its future depends on people who do see value in it, not on the open-mindedness or delicate consideration of people who don't. Furthermore, it's hypocritical for an editor of an extremely popular, carefully polished and curated blog to pretend he doesn't discriminate. People visit Boing Boing because Boing Boing consistently delivers quick nuggets of feel-good eccentricity whose substance is optional to the experience. Like any successful blog, it has a consistent and narrow culture. You won't find an impassioned screed advocating Communist government on Boing Boing, or a gallery of tattoos commemorating murders committed by the tattooees, or Buffy incest fanfic, or a patent for a WiMax antenna, or a discussion of why it's a bad deal for individual investors to buy corn futures. "The genuinely disruptive, novel artefacts are by definition unpredictable," he says. But he chooses items for Boing Boing that have a predictable flavor. That's okay. The world needs to be organized, and sometimes it has to be organized by collective or individual taste. Maybe the whole thing is just a plea to protect the fragile ego of creators. Express your taste, guys, but do so in the politest terms possible. Bullshit. If you can't handle a simple "too much time on his hands" comment, then you shouldn't present your work for public consumption. Hide it away from the sight of anybody who might accidentally have an opinion about it. Especially if you're bothered by opinions that (per Doctorow's assumption) are vacuous, because as H.L. Mencken said, injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. If you can't handle thoughtless, vacuous criticism, then god forbid anybody takes your work seriously; you'll have an aneurysm.
- thrdOriginal 16y ago
  Your ad hominem attacks against Cory Doctorow don't really make his article's points any less valid. There is a difference between being discriminating and dismissive, and the arguments made in this article mostly deal with the latter.
  - dkarl 16y ago
    Are you saying it's "dismissive" to express a negative opinion without supplying a raft of supporting arguments? A person can express an opinion without giving a dissertation; it does not imply arrogance or vacuousness. To say they are "dismissive" implies they expect their opinion to hold sway without discussion.
stcredzero 16y ago
It could be said that I am that guy. It's not that I have more time to spend than other people. I'm just more profligate with it.

by strick 16y ago

dkarl 16y ago

I think Doctorow assumes a lot about the motivations and the depth of thought of a person who says, "He has too much time on his hands." The real substitute for thought is Doctorow's dismissal of critical judgment: "But who can say what? Who can say which technologies and movements will be the enduring delights of generations to come, subject of PhD theses and documentary films, and which ones will be merely charming but obscure footnotes?" Who can say? We can say. We have to decide what's worth our time and what's not. We pass judgment on other people's work. We'll be wrong much of the time, but turning off our critical faculty altogether is worse than being wrong. At least "too much time on his hands" is a statement that can become the basis for a conversation, if you give the speaker some credit instead of assuming his statement is a "substitute for thought." The speaker might be prepared to expand on his opinion if someone wants to hear it. Anyway, a person who sees no value in something is irrelevant to its future. Its future depends on people who do see value in it, not on the open-mindedness or delicate consideration of people who don't. Furthermore, it's hypocritical for an editor of an extremely popular, carefully polished and curated blog to pretend he doesn't discriminate. People visit Boing Boing because Boing Boing consistently delivers quick nuggets of feel-good eccentricity whose substance is optional to the experience. Like any successful blog, it has a consistent and narrow culture. You won't find an impassioned screed advocating Communist government on Boing Boing, or a gallery of tattoos commemorating murders committed by the tattooees, or Buffy incest fanfic, or a patent for a WiMax antenna, or a discussion of why it's a bad deal for individual investors to buy corn futures. "The genuinely disruptive, novel artefacts are by definition unpredictable," he says. But he chooses items for Boing Boing that have a predictable flavor. That's okay. The world needs to be organized, and sometimes it has to be organized by collective or individual taste. Maybe the whole thing is just a plea to protect the fragile ego of creators. Express your taste, guys, but do so in the politest terms possible. Bullshit. If you can't handle a simple "too much time on his hands" comment, then you shouldn't present your work for public consumption. Hide it away from the sight of anybody who might accidentally have an opinion about it. Especially if you're bothered by opinions that (per Doctorow's assumption) are vacuous, because as H.L. Mencken said, injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. If you can't handle thoughtless, vacuous criticism, then god forbid anybody takes your work seriously; you'll have an aneurysm.

thrdOriginal 16y ago
Your ad hominem attacks against Cory Doctorow don't really make his article's points any less valid. There is a difference between being discriminating and dismissive, and the arguments made in this article mostly deal with the latter.
- dkarl 16y ago
  Are you saying it's "dismissive" to express a negative opinion without supplying a raft of supporting arguments? A person can express an opinion without giving a dissertation; it does not imply arrogance or vacuousness. To say they are "dismissive" implies they expect their opinion to hold sway without discussion.

stcredzero 16y ago

It could be said that I am that guy. It's not that I have more time to spend than other people. I'm just more profligate with it.