I think the footnotes emphasize the meandering and exhaustive aspects of his informationally dense style of writing. I think its a stylistic choice which emphas

I think the footnotes emphasize the meandering and exhaustive aspects of his informationally dense style of writing. I think its a stylistic choice which emphasizes his unique voice. I don't think hacker news is representative of the type of communication that papers communicate. A lot of times the communication on this website can default to adversarial, which I think is not the default for academic discourse. Plus I imagine there are other forums in academia aside from published studies (I think there are published discussion journals, and you also have blogs and such) that are suitable for that type of communication.