Scott Alexander uses this style sometimes, and I like it. However, he tends to do it once per essay. I think that can work very well. Here, though, after I hit the “that’s wrong” multiple times, it started to feel like nothing in the essay was worth trying to understand, since I expected what I was reading to later be proclaimed wrong. (Just my own feeling.)
Yes. The fact that this post is precisely about trying to deconfuse a pre-existing misconception makes it even more important to be crystal clear. It’s known to be hard to overwrite pre-existing misconceptions with the correct understanding, and I’m pretty sure this doesn’t help.
Scott Alexander uses this style sometimes, and I like it. However, he tends to do it once per essay. I think that can work very well. Here, though, after I hit the “that’s wrong” multiple times, it started to feel like nothing in the essay was worth trying to understand, since I expected what I was reading to later be proclaimed wrong. (Just my own feeling.)
Yes. The fact that this post is precisely about trying to deconfuse a pre-existing misconception makes it even more important to be crystal clear. It’s known to be hard to overwrite pre-existing misconceptions with the correct understanding, and I’m pretty sure this doesn’t help.