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> If reading the paper makes you feel insecure Nice projecting. He said nothing about him feeling insecure. He (rightfully, imho) said that the entire paper wa

• vorpalhex 9y ago
  > that the entire paper was incredibly pretentious Is it pretentious in it's writing style or it's topic? Writing style wise it's a perfectly par-for-the-course humanities paper. It's not a blog entry, nor a letter to a friend. It's a formal academic humanities paper. Topic wise, it's discussing aesthetics. There are plenty of places for criticizing the authors aesthetic arguments (in a formal manner), but in terms of writing about the topics and their relation to aesthetics the author does a perfectly fine job touching on the usual points. So I'm confused as to how the paper could be pretentious. He isn't making the claim that the only way to achieve aesthetic pleasure is to partake in his particular hobbies, or to argue for some idealized version of these hobbies. He's not glorifying programming, jazz or martial arts as being anything other than rule based frameworks with room for exceptions and growth. He isn't making strong exclusionary arguments in regards to other languages. Nor does he make any claim that he is special, or that his introspection is special or unique. So if reading a perfectly standard academic humanities paper leads you to think it's incredibly pretentious, then that says something of the beholder.