6 ms·

I agree. I'm all for Graham's pyramid of disagreement: we should focus on the core argument, rather than superfluous things like tone, or character, or capital

by 1dom 2y ago

I agree. I'm all for Graham's pyramid of disagreement: we should focus on the core argument, rather than superfluous things like tone, or character, or capitalisation. But this is too much for me personally. I just realised I consider the complete lack of capitalisation on a piece of public intellectual work to be obnoxious. Sorry, it's impractical, distracting and generates unnecessary cognitive load for everyone else. You're the top comment right now, and it's not about the content of the article at all, which is a real shame. All the wasted thought cycles across so many people :(

jiggawatts 2y ago
It's a fad associated with AI, popularised by Sam Altman especially. It's the new black turtleneck that everyone is wearing, but will swear upon their mother's life isn't because they're copying Steve Jobs.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  Well at least it makes it easy to know who to avoid
- alchemist1e9 2y ago
  > It's a fad associated with AI, popularised by Sam Altman especially. I know this is true but does anyone understand why they do it? It is actually cognitively disruptive when reading content because many of us are trained to simultaneously proof read while reading. So I also consider it a type of cognitive attack vector and it annoys me extremely as well.
  - saghm 2y ago
    The sibling comment to yours mentions that this is pretty common on Twitter, and I'd guess that it started as a way to making firing off tweets from a phone easier (since the extra effort to hit shift when typing on a phone keyboard is a bit higher, and the additional effort to go back and fix any typos that happen due to trying to capitalize things is also higher compared to using a traditional keyboard). Once enough people were doing it there, the style probably became recognizable and evoked a certain "vibe" that people wanted to replicate elsewhere, including in places where the original context of "hitting the shift key is more work than it's worth" doesn't hold as well.
    - bowsamic 2y ago
      > since the extra effort to hit shift when typing on a phone keyboard is a bit higher, and the additional effort to go back and fix any typos that happen due to trying to capitalize things is also higher compared to using a traditional keyboard I'm a bit confused about this. Do people turn off auto capitalisation on their phones? I very rarely have to press shift on my phone
      - saghm 2y ago
        I hadn't considered that. My best guess is that it was originally an intentional decision based on consistency with nouns that people might have mid-sentence that they can't rely on autocorrect to capitalize properly.
      - meowface 2y ago
        I and everyone I know turns it off. On many platforms and in many cultures, capitalization often implies Solemness or even rudeness in 1-on-1 conversations, and otherwise comes across as being out of touch in other kinds of communication.
        bowsamic 2y ago
        I’ve never encountered anyone turning it off. I avoid socialising with people who think it’s rude to use capitalisation.
        Izkata 2y ago
        It's not directly rude, it's more like a serious tone of voice. But it only works like that when used unnecessarily, like in chat or IM where the message boundary styling doubles as a sentence boundary. Using the chat/IM style outside of that context just doesn't work and looks really odd, like it's obviously someone who didn't learn those norms and is now mimicking them without understanding them.
        bowsamic 2y ago
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - andai 2y ago
    >So I also consider it a type of cognitive attack vector What does this mean?
    - alchemist1e9 2y ago
      I mean it seems very intentional and a passive aggressive technique to make the read feel disoriented while reading the content. I can literally feel it assaulting my reading speed.
  - nomel 2y ago
    It's not true at all. It was very common, nearly norm in all online communication until phones started auto correcting with capitalization. You could always tell who was a mac/phone user by their use of capitalization. Sam is older than when that happened. He almost certainly spent the majority of his online life typing in lowercase, as I did. Go look at any old IRC chat log, forum, etc from his era.
- meowface 2y ago
  Twitter and all forms of instant messaging (SMS, WhatsApp, Discord, and the older ones like AIM/MSN/ICQ) have normalized it for many years. Sam is just one of the few large company CEOs to tweet in the style other Twitter users usually use. He's adopting the native culture rather than setting a trend. Sam still uses capitalization in all of his essays, as do most people (including young people). In essays, like this one, it's distracting without it. I predict in 10 years the vast majority of people will all-lowercase on places like Twitter but almost no one will do it for essays.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    >Sam is just one of the few large company CEOs to tweet in the style other Twitter users usually use. Just looked at the algorithmic feed on Twitter to makes sure trends haven't shifted overnight, and zero people in that sample of hundreds of tweets used all lower case in the tweets. Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media. Sam is trying to bE dIFFERENT. He isn't adopting a norm but instead he's trying to make one. It looks ridiculous.
    - meowface 2y ago
      Most people on my feed do. It's true that professionals, executives, and public intellectuals generally don't use lowercase and that Sam is trying to normalize that, but my main point was that the medium matters. Lowercase looks ridiculous for longform essays and normal for short messages and microblog posts.
    - albedoa 2y ago
      > Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media. That is the professional Twitter class and is not at all representative of the norm. Click through to the replies. Sentence case is probably in the vast minority. I promise you that it is neither a fad nor started with the AI bro.
      - jiggawatts 2y ago
        Black turtlenecks existed before Steve Jobs wore them.
- yapyap 2y ago
  [dead]
- 4ggr0 2y ago
  i don't want to press the shift-key everytime i need a capitalized letter on my phone and i disable auto-correct because it constantly messes with native languages etc. wasn't aware that this makes me a steve jobs copier :( EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    When you consciously choose to save yourself effort in writing, at the expense of the readers who are trying to make sense of what you are saying, the people onto whom you've transferred the cognitive load are not likely to appreciate your laziness.
    - 4ggr0 2y ago
      your comment contains one, single, capitalized letter. if the first W in your comment would have been small, would that have made your comment so much harder to read? does it make my comment so hard to read just because i don't start my sentences with big letters and don't capitalize myself(i)? really don't get the fuzz. of course i capitalize letters in "official" texts, but we're in a comment section. i find it doubly funny because english doesn't capitalize lots of things, anyways.
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    > EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez. I find it weird that you would be surprised that people care about the quality of textual communication
    - 4ggr0 2y ago
      maybe because i use downvotes differently than others. downvote for me means, that someone either outright lies, is very disrespectful or adds nothing to the discussion. i don't see it as a "i don't agree with this comment"-button. opinions differ, i guess :)
  - tomsmeding 2y ago
- msikora 2y ago
  That is so incredibly dumb. I can get it in a tweet, but please, please, please properly capitalize in anything longer than a few words!
treetalker 2y ago
Graham's Hierarchy, in "How to Disagree": https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Yeah, people should wake up to what people are really saying.
Gormo 2y ago
Capitalization and punctuation are to written language what pronunciation and stress are to spoken language. If someone was mispronouncing every word, using incorrect vowels, stressing the wrong syllables, etc., you'd have a really hard time understanding anything they're saying. Writing with incorrect punctuation and capitalization impedes comprehension in the same way.

by 1dom 2y ago

jiggawatts 2y ago

It's a fad associated with AI, popularised by Sam Altman especially. It's the new black turtleneck that everyone is wearing, but will swear upon their mother's life isn't because they're copying Steve Jobs.

bowsamic 2y ago
Well at least it makes it easy to know who to avoid
alchemist1e9 2y ago
> It's a fad associated with AI, popularised by Sam Altman especially. I know this is true but does anyone understand why they do it? It is actually cognitively disruptive when reading content because many of us are trained to simultaneously proof read while reading. So I also consider it a type of cognitive attack vector and it annoys me extremely as well.
- saghm 2y ago
  The sibling comment to yours mentions that this is pretty common on Twitter, and I'd guess that it started as a way to making firing off tweets from a phone easier (since the extra effort to hit shift when typing on a phone keyboard is a bit higher, and the additional effort to go back and fix any typos that happen due to trying to capitalize things is also higher compared to using a traditional keyboard). Once enough people were doing it there, the style probably became recognizable and evoked a certain "vibe" that people wanted to replicate elsewhere, including in places where the original context of "hitting the shift key is more work than it's worth" doesn't hold as well.
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    > since the extra effort to hit shift when typing on a phone keyboard is a bit higher, and the additional effort to go back and fix any typos that happen due to trying to capitalize things is also higher compared to using a traditional keyboard I'm a bit confused about this. Do people turn off auto capitalisation on their phones? I very rarely have to press shift on my phone
    - saghm 2y ago
      I hadn't considered that. My best guess is that it was originally an intentional decision based on consistency with nouns that people might have mid-sentence that they can't rely on autocorrect to capitalize properly.
    - meowface 2y ago
      I and everyone I know turns it off. On many platforms and in many cultures, capitalization often implies Solemness or even rudeness in 1-on-1 conversations, and otherwise comes across as being out of touch in other kinds of communication.
      - bowsamic 2y ago
        I’ve never encountered anyone turning it off. I avoid socialising with people who think it’s rude to use capitalisation.
        Izkata 2y ago
        It's not directly rude, it's more like a serious tone of voice. But it only works like that when used unnecessarily, like in chat or IM where the message boundary styling doubles as a sentence boundary. Using the chat/IM style outside of that context just doesn't work and looks really odd, like it's obviously someone who didn't learn those norms and is now mimicking them without understanding them.
        bowsamic 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- andai 2y ago
  >So I also consider it a type of cognitive attack vector What does this mean?
  - alchemist1e9 2y ago
    I mean it seems very intentional and a passive aggressive technique to make the read feel disoriented while reading the content. I can literally feel it assaulting my reading speed.
- nomel 2y ago
  It's not true at all. It was very common, nearly norm in all online communication until phones started auto correcting with capitalization. You could always tell who was a mac/phone user by their use of capitalization. Sam is older than when that happened. He almost certainly spent the majority of his online life typing in lowercase, as I did. Go look at any old IRC chat log, forum, etc from his era.
meowface 2y ago
Twitter and all forms of instant messaging (SMS, WhatsApp, Discord, and the older ones like AIM/MSN/ICQ) have normalized it for many years. Sam is just one of the few large company CEOs to tweet in the style other Twitter users usually use. He's adopting the native culture rather than setting a trend. Sam still uses capitalization in all of his essays, as do most people (including young people). In essays, like this one, it's distracting without it. I predict in 10 years the vast majority of people will all-lowercase on places like Twitter but almost no one will do it for essays.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  >Sam is just one of the few large company CEOs to tweet in the style other Twitter users usually use. Just looked at the algorithmic feed on Twitter to makes sure trends haven't shifted overnight, and zero people in that sample of hundreds of tweets used all lower case in the tweets. Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media. Sam is trying to bE dIFFERENT. He isn't adopting a norm but instead he's trying to make one. It looks ridiculous.
  - meowface 2y ago
    Most people on my feed do. It's true that professionals, executives, and public intellectuals generally don't use lowercase and that Sam is trying to normalize that, but my main point was that the medium matters. Lowercase looks ridiculous for longform essays and normal for short messages and microblog posts.
  - albedoa 2y ago
    > Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media. That is the professional Twitter class and is not at all representative of the norm. Click through to the replies. Sentence case is probably in the vast minority. I promise you that it is neither a fad nor started with the AI bro.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      Black turtlenecks existed before Steve Jobs wore them.
yapyap 2y ago
[dead]
4ggr0 2y ago
i don't want to press the shift-key everytime i need a capitalized letter on my phone and i disable auto-correct because it constantly messes with native languages etc. wasn't aware that this makes me a steve jobs copier :( EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  When you consciously choose to save yourself effort in writing, at the expense of the readers who are trying to make sense of what you are saying, the people onto whom you've transferred the cognitive load are not likely to appreciate your laziness.
  - 4ggr0 2y ago
    your comment contains one, single, capitalized letter. if the first W in your comment would have been small, would that have made your comment so much harder to read? does it make my comment so hard to read just because i don't start my sentences with big letters and don't capitalize myself(i)? really don't get the fuzz. of course i capitalize letters in "official" texts, but we're in a comment section. i find it doubly funny because english doesn't capitalize lots of things, anyways.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  > EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez. I find it weird that you would be surprised that people care about the quality of textual communication
  - 4ggr0 2y ago
    maybe because i use downvotes differently than others. downvote for me means, that someone either outright lies, is very disrespectful or adds nothing to the discussion. i don't see it as a "i don't agree with this comment"-button. opinions differ, i guess :)
- tomsmeding 2y ago
msikora 2y ago
That is so incredibly dumb. I can get it in a tweet, but please, please, please properly capitalize in anything longer than a few words!

treetalker 2y ago

Graham's Hierarchy, in "How to Disagree": https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

MrMcCall 2y ago
Yeah, people should wake up to what people are really saying.

Gormo 2y ago

Capitalization and punctuation are to written language what pronunciation and stress are to spoken language. If someone was mispronouncing every word, using incorrect vowels, stressing the wrong syllables, etc., you'd have a really hard time understanding anything they're saying. Writing with incorrect punctuation and capitalization impedes comprehension in the same way.