I should acknowledge first that I understand that writing is hard. If the only realistic choice was between this post as it is, and no post at all, then I’m glad we got the post rather than no post.
That said, by the standards I hold my own writing to, I would embarrassed to publish a post like this which criticizes imaginary paraphrases of researchers, rather than citing and quoting the actual text they’ve actually published. (The post acknowledges this as a flaw, but if it were me, I wouldn’t even publish.) The reason I don’t think critics necessarily need to be able to pass an author’s Ideological Turing Test is because, as a critic, I can at least be scrupulous in my reasoning about the actual text that the author actually published, even if the stereotype of the author I have in my head is faulty. If I can’t produce the quotes to show that I’m not just arguing against a stereotype in my head, then it’s not clear why the audience should care.
This seems right to me for posts replying to individual authors/topics (and I think this criticism may apply to some other more targeted Nate posts in that vein)
But I think for giving his takes on a large breadth of people, the cost of making sure each section is well vetted increases the cost by a really prohibitive amount, and I think it’s probably better to do it the way Nate did here (clearly establishing the epistemic status of the post, and letting people in the comments argue if he got something wrong).
Also, curious if you think there’s a particular instance where someone(s) felt misrepresented here? (I just tried doing a skim of the comments, there were a lot of them and the first ones I saw seemed more like arguing with the substance of the disagreement rather than his characterization being wrong. I gave up kinda quickly, but for now, did you recall him getting something wrong here, or just thinking on general principle that one should’t err in this direction?)
I should acknowledge first that I understand that writing is hard. If the only realistic choice was between this post as it is, and no post at all, then I’m glad we got the post rather than no post.
That said, by the standards I hold my own writing to, I would embarrassed to publish a post like this which criticizes imaginary paraphrases of researchers, rather than citing and quoting the actual text they’ve actually published. (The post acknowledges this as a flaw, but if it were me, I wouldn’t even publish.) The reason I don’t think critics necessarily need to be able to pass an author’s Ideological Turing Test is because, as a critic, I can at least be scrupulous in my reasoning about the actual text that the author actually published, even if the stereotype of the author I have in my head is faulty. If I can’t produce the quotes to show that I’m not just arguing against a stereotype in my head, then it’s not clear why the audience should care.
This seems right to me for posts replying to individual authors/topics (and I think this criticism may apply to some other more targeted Nate posts in that vein)
But I think for giving his takes on a large breadth of people, the cost of making sure each section is well vetted increases the cost by a really prohibitive amount, and I think it’s probably better to do it the way Nate did here (clearly establishing the epistemic status of the post, and letting people in the comments argue if he got something wrong).
Also, curious if you think there’s a particular instance where someone(s) felt misrepresented here? (I just tried doing a skim of the comments, there were a lot of them and the first ones I saw seemed more like arguing with the substance of the disagreement rather than his characterization being wrong. I gave up kinda quickly, but for now, did you recall him getting something wrong here, or just thinking on general principle that one should’t err in this direction?)