If I claim somebody is ranting and raving, I’m not claiming anything about whether I’m yelling, but whether they are. Of course, “rant” has more than one meani

If I claim somebody is ranting and raving, I’m not claiming anything about whether I’m yelling, but whether they are. Of course, “rant” has more than one meaning. I did not mean “the writer should be held in a mental institution as a threat to themself or others,” or even “writer should feel embarrassed and ashamed for publishing this.” I meant “article makes statements that generally aren’t supported by valid arguments.” I then gave an example that (1) was not the only case of a supporting argument not actually supporting the claim, and (2) perhaps wasn’t completely fair. But first, a story: Recently, one of my sons had diarrhea. He complained that his sister made him sick, since she had just recovered from a cold. He never understood why we rejected that argument (yes, people with colds can give other people colds, but he didn’t have a cold), and then told him he didn’t have anything to support his claim. As far as he was concerned, he had made something that looked like a valid argument: his sister had a cold, now he was sick, q.e.d. So when I said that the statement “‘supposed’ optimization” isn’t really an argument, but a statement that “there are people who disagree with me, but they’re wrong,” which isn’t a supporting argument — if anything, it’s a placeholder for a supporting argument — I forgot that the essay does advance one reason to reject the “‘supposed’ optimization,” but I rejected this reason (the issue about whether it’s slower to increment a value that has defined overflow than one that does not isn’t a question of whether the two values are the same size), and then said the statement had no support. It is true that at this point, I can provide other reasons to reject the compiler writers’ argument, but then the whole exercise feels like a psychic reading (writer: “I feel like blue will be important for my next argument, can you tell me why?” reader: “wow, that’s uncanny; blue is important ...”).