And that’s something that is harder to do if you’ve never had to navigate that trade off in writing your own posts.
Huh? How does this make sense? If a post is too long, then it’s too long. If writing a post that’s short enough is hard, that… doesn’t actually have any bearing whatsoever on whether the post is too long or not.
I mean, would you say that judging whether soup is too salty is harder to do if you’ve never cooked soup before? Obviously it’s not. If I bake a soufflé and it collapses, do you have to have baked a soufflé yourself to see that my soufflé has collapsed? No. If I build a bridge and it collapses, do you have to have built a bridge yourself to see that my bridge has collapsed? Of course not.
If the community recognizes that “Your post is bad” requires knowing how hard it is to write good posts, then even bad comments aren’t such an issue because the badness won’t spread.
But “your post is bad” doesn’t require knowing how hard it is to write good posts.
Whence comes this absolutely bizarre idea that would-be critics of a thing must themselves know how to do or make that thing? Did Roger Ebert ever direct any movies? Has Ruth Reichl operated any restaurants? Was John Neal himself a painter?
I mean, would you say that judging whether soup is too salty is harder to do if you’ve never cooked soup before?
Too salty for my personal tastes? Or too salty in some sort of objective way, like “This restaurant would be more successful if they made their soups less salty”?
It’s easy to whine “Ew! This is definitely too salty!” and claim it to be obvious, but on what is that based? If it’s my personal tastes, then I represent a sample size of one, and it would be completely reasonable to blow off my criticism of your soup. Especially if your own taste of the soup says it’s fine.
If I can say “Look, I’ve cooked soup for all sorts of demographics, and the amount of salt you put in there is going to be appealing to only a select few”, then that’s a very different sort of criticism. It’s not the “cooking” that matters, its exposure to the tradeoffs.
Cooking soup and writing posts isn’t the only way to get to a non-myopic perspective, and if the cook accidentally spilled all the salt into the soup it’s not hard to notice that. At the same time, if it’s that simple it’s probably obvious to the cook too. If someone is blowing off your criticism as myopic and you can’t see how that’s justified, they’re probably right.
Too salty for my personal tastes? Or too salty in some sort of objective way, like “This restaurant would be more successful if they made their soups less salty”?
There is only “too salty for my personal tastes”, evaluated for all relevant values of “my” and aggregated accordingly. Having cooked soup is not necessary for making such judgments. Indeed, having cooked soup adds nothing to your ability to make such judgments.
If you’re optimizing “how successful would the restaurant be if the soup were more/less salty”, then you are no longer optimizing “how salty should the soup be, for it to be good soup”. (It’s entirely possible that your restaurant will be more successful if you make the soup a bit too salty, thus encouraging your patrons to spend more money on drinks. Or, perhaps you could make the soup alternately not salty enough and too salty, and start some sort of viral social media argument thing about whether your soup is too salty or not salty enough. Or something else that involves something other than actually cooking good soup.)
It’s easy to whine “Ew! This is definitely too salty!” and claim it to be obvious, but on what is that based? If it’s my personal tastes, then I represent a sample size of one, and it would be completely reasonable to blow off my criticism of your soup. Especially if your own taste of the soup says it’s fine.
Given that you can only taste food with your own taste buds, not anyone else’s, you cannot possibly represent anything but “a sample size of one”. And if my own taste of the soup says it’s fine, then it is no more and no less reasonable to blow off your criticism of my soup as it is to blow off a hundred different people’s criticism of my soup. And none of this has the slightest thing to do with whether any of those people have ever cooked soup before.
If I can say “Look, I’ve cooked soup for all sorts of demographics, and the amount of salt you put in there is going to be appealing to only a select few”, then that’s a very different sort of criticism. It’s not the “cooking” that matters, its exposure to the tradeoffs.
If I try your soup, and it’s too salty, and you give me that reply, then the correct response on my part is to totally ignore what you said, and to not update my evaluation of your soup at all. Literally zero update is the correct amount of update. Because your arguments and your perspective cannot possibly affect my judgment of whether the soup is too salty. It’s simply a non sequitur.
At the same time, if it’s that simple it’s probably obvious to the cook too.
This is false. People miss simple and obvious problems all the time.
If someone is blowing off your criticism as myopic and you can’t see how that’s justified, they’re probably right.
As a counterpoint to the above argument, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this before?
Bob: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Alice: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup tastes fine now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become more pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, you should have undersalted it slightly.
Bob: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
Or, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: It’s definitely too salty, I can taste it…
Bob: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this?
Alice: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Bob: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup is too salty now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become less pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, I have oversalted it slightly.
Alice: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
(Application of the lessons drawn from these two scenarios to the domain of writing posts on a community blog is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Huh? How does this make sense? If a post is too long, then it’s too long. If writing a post that’s short enough is hard, that… doesn’t actually have any bearing whatsoever on whether the post is too long or not.
I mean, would you say that judging whether soup is too salty is harder to do if you’ve never cooked soup before? Obviously it’s not. If I bake a soufflé and it collapses, do you have to have baked a soufflé yourself to see that my soufflé has collapsed? No. If I build a bridge and it collapses, do you have to have built a bridge yourself to see that my bridge has collapsed? Of course not.
But “your post is bad” doesn’t require knowing how hard it is to write good posts.
Whence comes this absolutely bizarre idea that would-be critics of a thing must themselves know how to do or make that thing? Did Roger Ebert ever direct any movies? Has Ruth Reichl operated any restaurants? Was John Neal himself a painter?
Too salty for my personal tastes? Or too salty in some sort of objective way, like “This restaurant would be more successful if they made their soups less salty”?
It’s easy to whine “Ew! This is definitely too salty!” and claim it to be obvious, but on what is that based? If it’s my personal tastes, then I represent a sample size of one, and it would be completely reasonable to blow off my criticism of your soup. Especially if your own taste of the soup says it’s fine.
If I can say “Look, I’ve cooked soup for all sorts of demographics, and the amount of salt you put in there is going to be appealing to only a select few”, then that’s a very different sort of criticism. It’s not the “cooking” that matters, its exposure to the tradeoffs.
Cooking soup and writing posts isn’t the only way to get to a non-myopic perspective, and if the cook accidentally spilled all the salt into the soup it’s not hard to notice that. At the same time, if it’s that simple it’s probably obvious to the cook too. If someone is blowing off your criticism as myopic and you can’t see how that’s justified, they’re probably right.
There is only “too salty for my personal tastes”, evaluated for all relevant values of “my” and aggregated accordingly. Having cooked soup is not necessary for making such judgments. Indeed, having cooked soup adds nothing to your ability to make such judgments.
If you’re optimizing “how successful would the restaurant be if the soup were more/less salty”, then you are no longer optimizing “how salty should the soup be, for it to be good soup”. (It’s entirely possible that your restaurant will be more successful if you make the soup a bit too salty, thus encouraging your patrons to spend more money on drinks. Or, perhaps you could make the soup alternately not salty enough and too salty, and start some sort of viral social media argument thing about whether your soup is too salty or not salty enough. Or something else that involves something other than actually cooking good soup.)
Given that you can only taste food with your own taste buds, not anyone else’s, you cannot possibly represent anything but “a sample size of one”. And if my own taste of the soup says it’s fine, then it is no more and no less reasonable to blow off your criticism of my soup as it is to blow off a hundred different people’s criticism of my soup. And none of this has the slightest thing to do with whether any of those people have ever cooked soup before.
If I try your soup, and it’s too salty, and you give me that reply, then the correct response on my part is to totally ignore what you said, and to not update my evaluation of your soup at all. Literally zero update is the correct amount of update. Because your arguments and your perspective cannot possibly affect my judgment of whether the soup is too salty. It’s simply a non sequitur.
This is false. People miss simple and obvious problems all the time.
And so this is also false.
As a counterpoint to the above argument, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this before?
Bob: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Alice: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup tastes fine now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become more pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, you should have undersalted it slightly.
Bob: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
Or, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: It’s definitely too salty, I can taste it…
Bob: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this?
Alice: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Bob: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup is too salty now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become less pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, I have oversalted it slightly.
Alice: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
(Application of the lessons drawn from these two scenarios to the domain of writing posts on a community blog is left as an exercise for the reader.)