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I've flagged the piece as wild speculation. Baffled what part of the article stimulated your intellectual curiosity. Remarkably, the article itself rests the ca

by pacala 7y ago

I've flagged the piece as wild speculation. Baffled what part of the article stimulated your intellectual curiosity. Remarkably, the article itself rests the case of relationship between Shakespeare's plays and the respective lady, as well as the the motivations of the author, in two phrases out of the hundreds meandering mostly around the subject. To save everyone else's time: > Her writing style bears no obvious resemblance to Shakespeare’s in his plays, though Hudson strains to suggest similarities. The overlap lies in the feminist content.

dang 7y ago
Curiosity and speculation are compatible. The spirit that would banish speculation, not so much.
- pacala 7y ago
  What about pieces that are written with a not-so-subtle ideological axe to grind? Let's take fundamentalist Christianity, for example https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/humans/wheres-the-evidence-of-dinosaur-and-human-coexistence https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/humans/wheres-the-evi.... Would that qualify as "intellectual curiosity"? As far as I can tell, OP is the same genre of wild speculation, only written from a fundamentalist feminist perspective.
  - dang 7y ago
    Good question. Ideological axe-grinding leads to predictable arguments in which people have nothing new to say and merely flame each other. That very much destroys the curious spirit, so from an HN point of view—totally different. We moderate all that heavily, since otherwise flamewars would consume the site. If you want to see how heavily, check out how tedious it is: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20ideological https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... I don't think you're characterizing this article fairly at all. The quote you cherry-picked earlier made it sound much dumber than it is (I actually objected to that earlier but decided to let it go) and "fundamentalist feminist" seems to me way off base. Are you sure it's just "speculation" that you're upset about? To me it feels more likely to be about the ideological vibes the article could possibly be giving off, or the buttons it could be pushing. I say that without judgment; it's understandable if so; but in that case we're simply not talking about curiosity. I don't get the impression that the author is grinding an axe. She just went down a rabbit hole that surprised her, and dug up a lot of interesting information along the way. Sure it's speculation, but it's an interesting ride. If you don't enjoy that ride, others are not far away.
    - pacala 7y ago
      Synopsis of the article: - First half: Shakespeare didn't write the plays himself. - Second half: Life of Emilia Bassano, and "traces" thereof in some of Shakespeare's work, as narrated by "Emilia Bassano’s most ardent champion" John Hudson. In all honesty, the only quote I could find that attempts to substantiate the claim of Emilia Bassano as Shakespeare, about 3/4 in the piece, is the one I quoted. The claim doesn't stand on its face, as she's a published author and her style doesn't match Shakespeare's work. Case closed. If you have another quote that substantiates the claim in the title, would you please share it, instead of engaging in threats and personal attacks? Edit: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As far as my reading comprehension goes, a conservative interpretation of the evidence in the article supports at best "Emilia Bassano inspired some of Shakespeare's work". I can't explain the jump to "Emilia Bassano wrote all of Shakespeare's work", maybe you can help. Going with the conservative interpretation, the article seems better fit for the Literary Review magazine.
      - dang 7y ago
        You're treating the article as if it's claiming proof when it's really just exploring a question. Is that really so hard to see? or so bad? A literary review article is perfectly welcome on HN if it's interesting and curious. We could use more of those.
        pacala 7y ago
        You're absolutely right. I expect[ed] articles on HN to make a credible attempt at being true, ideally independently verifiably so. "Did Emilia Bassano ghost-write Shakespeare works? Most likely not." would be a slightly more intellectually honest presentation, given the extraordinarity of the claim, the paucity of positive evidence, the presence of negative evidence, and it being 1 out of 66 other competing claims at being Shakespeare [0]. Leaving one more quote from article, re: the rabbit hole the author just happened to stumble into out of intellectual curiosity. > What would the revelation of a woman’s hand at work mean, aside from the loss of a prime tourist attraction in Stratford-upon-Avon? Would the effect be a blow to the cultural patriarchy, or the erosion of the canon’s status? Would (male) myths of inexplicable genius take a hit? Would women at last claim their rightful authority as historical and intellectual forces? [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/amelia-bassano-william-shakespeare/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/amelia-bassano-william-sha...
- Veen 7y ago
  Would you consider ill-informed, poorly-argued, patently false nonsense on-topic if it concerned a science or technology topic? This “triggers” people with interest or expertise in literature because the “X wrote Shakespeare’s plays” has been discussed to death by experts and lay people alike. It’s the literary equivalent of crackpot amateur theories about the solution to cold fusion.
  - dang 7y ago
    Putting the question that way stacks the deck a bit. Could an article be both interesting and mistaken on a technical topic? Sure it could.
deleted 7y ago
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by pacala 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Curiosity and speculation are compatible. The spirit that would banish speculation, not so much.

pacala 7y ago
What about pieces that are written with a not-so-subtle ideological axe to grind? Let's take fundamentalist Christianity, for example https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/humans/wheres-the-evidence-of-dinosaur-and-human-coexistence https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/humans/wheres-the-evi.... Would that qualify as "intellectual curiosity"? As far as I can tell, OP is the same genre of wild speculation, only written from a fundamentalist feminist perspective.
- dang 7y ago
  Good question. Ideological axe-grinding leads to predictable arguments in which people have nothing new to say and merely flame each other. That very much destroys the curious spirit, so from an HN point of view—totally different. We moderate all that heavily, since otherwise flamewars would consume the site. If you want to see how heavily, check out how tedious it is: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20ideological https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... I don't think you're characterizing this article fairly at all. The quote you cherry-picked earlier made it sound much dumber than it is (I actually objected to that earlier but decided to let it go) and "fundamentalist feminist" seems to me way off base. Are you sure it's just "speculation" that you're upset about? To me it feels more likely to be about the ideological vibes the article could possibly be giving off, or the buttons it could be pushing. I say that without judgment; it's understandable if so; but in that case we're simply not talking about curiosity. I don't get the impression that the author is grinding an axe. She just went down a rabbit hole that surprised her, and dug up a lot of interesting information along the way. Sure it's speculation, but it's an interesting ride. If you don't enjoy that ride, others are not far away.
  - pacala 7y ago
    Synopsis of the article: - First half: Shakespeare didn't write the plays himself. - Second half: Life of Emilia Bassano, and "traces" thereof in some of Shakespeare's work, as narrated by "Emilia Bassano’s most ardent champion" John Hudson. In all honesty, the only quote I could find that attempts to substantiate the claim of Emilia Bassano as Shakespeare, about 3/4 in the piece, is the one I quoted. The claim doesn't stand on its face, as she's a published author and her style doesn't match Shakespeare's work. Case closed. If you have another quote that substantiates the claim in the title, would you please share it, instead of engaging in threats and personal attacks? Edit: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As far as my reading comprehension goes, a conservative interpretation of the evidence in the article supports at best "Emilia Bassano inspired some of Shakespeare's work". I can't explain the jump to "Emilia Bassano wrote all of Shakespeare's work", maybe you can help. Going with the conservative interpretation, the article seems better fit for the Literary Review magazine.
    - dang 7y ago
      You're treating the article as if it's claiming proof when it's really just exploring a question. Is that really so hard to see? or so bad? A literary review article is perfectly welcome on HN if it's interesting and curious. We could use more of those.
      - pacala 7y ago
        You're absolutely right. I expect[ed] articles on HN to make a credible attempt at being true, ideally independently verifiably so. "Did Emilia Bassano ghost-write Shakespeare works? Most likely not." would be a slightly more intellectually honest presentation, given the extraordinarity of the claim, the paucity of positive evidence, the presence of negative evidence, and it being 1 out of 66 other competing claims at being Shakespeare [0]. Leaving one more quote from article, re: the rabbit hole the author just happened to stumble into out of intellectual curiosity. > What would the revelation of a woman’s hand at work mean, aside from the loss of a prime tourist attraction in Stratford-upon-Avon? Would the effect be a blow to the cultural patriarchy, or the erosion of the canon’s status? Would (male) myths of inexplicable genius take a hit? Would women at last claim their rightful authority as historical and intellectual forces? [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/amelia-bassano-william-shakespeare/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/amelia-bassano-william-sha...
Veen 7y ago
Would you consider ill-informed, poorly-argued, patently false nonsense on-topic if it concerned a science or technology topic? This “triggers” people with interest or expertise in literature because the “X wrote Shakespeare’s plays” has been discussed to death by experts and lay people alike. It’s the literary equivalent of crackpot amateur theories about the solution to cold fusion.
- dang 7y ago
  Putting the question that way stacks the deck a bit. Could an article be both interesting and mistaken on a technical topic? Sure it could.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]