I think the people who talk as though the contested issue here is Said’s disagreeableness combined with him having high standards are missing the point.
Said Achmiz, in contrast, expresses some amount of contempt for people who do fairly specific and circumscribed things like write posts that are vague or self-contradictory or that promote religion or woo.
If it was just that (and if by “posts that are vague” you mean “posts that are so vague that they are bad, or posts that are vague in ways that defeat the point of the post”), I’d be sympathetic to your take. However, my impression is that a lot more posts would trigger Said’s “questioning mode.” (Personally I’m hesitant to use the word “contempt,” but it’s fair to say it made engaging more difficult for authors and they did involve what I think of as “sneer tone” sometimes.)
The way I see it, there are posts that might be a bit vague in some ways but they’re still good and valuable. This could even be because the post was gesturing at a phenomeon with nuances where it would require a lot of writing (and disentanglement work) to make it completely concise and comprehensive, or it could be because an author wanted to share an idea what wasn’t 100% fleshed out but might have already been pointing at something valuable. I feel like Said not only has a personal distaste of that sort of “post that contains bits that aren’t pinned down,” but it also seemed like he wouldn’t get any closer to seeing the point of those posts or comments when it was explained in additional detail. (Or, in case he did eventually see the points, he’d rarely say thanks or acknowledged that he got it now). That’s pretty frustrating to deal with for authors and other commenters.
(Having said all that, I have not had any problems with Said’s commenting in the last two years—though I did find it strongly negative and off-putting before that point. And to end with something positive, I liked that Said was one of the few LessWrongers who steered back a bit against Zvi’s very one-sided takes on homeschooling—context here.)
I feel like Said not only has a personal distaste of that sort of “post that contains bits that aren’t pinned down,” but it also seemed like he wouldn’t get any closer to seeing the point of those posts or comments when it was explained in additional detail.
If a post starts off vague and exploratory, on a topic that isn’t very easy to think/write about, it would make sense that it usually couldn’t be clarified enough to meet Said’s standards within a few back-and-forth comments.
That’s pretty frustrating to deal with for authors and other commenters.
Yes, but I think that’s in part because of the nature of intellectual progress, and in part because there are so few people like Said who is incentivized (by his own personality) to push back hard and persistently on this kind of post (so people are not used to it). I think it’s also in part due to the tone that he typically employs, which he theoretically could change, but that seems connected with his personality in a way that we seemingly couldn’t get one without the other.
Sure, I don’t mean to imply that Said is beyond reproach, or that all his comments were necessarily good. Just that I think insofar as this post was an attempt to address the reasons Said-defenders felt he needed so much defending, it has failed.
I think the people who talk as though the contested issue here is Said’s disagreeableness combined with him having high standards are missing the point.
If it was just that (and if by “posts that are vague” you mean “posts that are so vague that they are bad, or posts that are vague in ways that defeat the point of the post”), I’d be sympathetic to your take. However, my impression is that a lot more posts would trigger Said’s “questioning mode.” (Personally I’m hesitant to use the word “contempt,” but it’s fair to say it made engaging more difficult for authors and they did involve what I think of as “sneer tone” sometimes.)
The way I see it, there are posts that might be a bit vague in some ways but they’re still good and valuable. This could even be because the post was gesturing at a phenomeon with nuances where it would require a lot of writing (and disentanglement work) to make it completely concise and comprehensive, or it could be because an author wanted to share an idea what wasn’t 100% fleshed out but might have already been pointing at something valuable. I feel like Said not only has a personal distaste of that sort of “post that contains bits that aren’t pinned down,” but it also seemed like he wouldn’t get any closer to seeing the point of those posts or comments when it was explained in additional detail. (Or, in case he did eventually see the points, he’d rarely say thanks or acknowledged that he got it now). That’s pretty frustrating to deal with for authors and other commenters.
(Having said all that, I have not had any problems with Said’s commenting in the last two years—though I did find it strongly negative and off-putting before that point. And to end with something positive, I liked that Said was one of the few LessWrongers who steered back a bit against Zvi’s very one-sided takes on homeschooling—context here.)
If a post starts off vague and exploratory, on a topic that isn’t very easy to think/write about, it would make sense that it usually couldn’t be clarified enough to meet Said’s standards within a few back-and-forth comments.
Yes, but I think that’s in part because of the nature of intellectual progress, and in part because there are so few people like Said who is incentivized (by his own personality) to push back hard and persistently on this kind of post (so people are not used to it). I think it’s also in part due to the tone that he typically employs, which he theoretically could change, but that seems connected with his personality in a way that we seemingly couldn’t get one without the other.
Sure, I don’t mean to imply that Said is beyond reproach, or that all his comments were necessarily good. Just that I think insofar as this post was an attempt to address the reasons Said-defenders felt he needed so much defending, it has failed.