Describing them as posts versus comments probably isn’t ideal, but I think it’s mostly okay.
Yes, in retrospect, I wish I had done a better job of flagging the metonymy. I’m glad the idea got through despite that.
I claim that yes, these two different types of writing are significantly different activities.
Different in what respect? When I write a critical post (arguing that author X is wrong about Y1 because Z1), it feels like relevantly the same activity as when I write a “non-critical” post (just arguing that Y2 because Z2 without reference to any reputedly mistaken prior work) in terms of what cognitive skills I’m using: the substance is about working out how Zi implies Yi. That’s the aspect relevant to the playing/coaching metaphor. Whether there happens to be an X in the picture doesn’t seem to change the essential character of the work. (Right? Does your subjective assessment differ?)
The effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by my username does not need to be the same as the effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by another username!
It doesn’t need to, but should it? The section titled “However, Critic Contributions Can Inform Uncertain Estimates of Comment Value” describes one reason why it should. My bold philosophical claim is that that’s the only reason. (I’m counting gjm’s comment about known expertise as relevantly “the same reason.”)
Alternatively, for the purpose of the argument in that section, we can instead imagine that we’re talking about a blog where the commenting form has a blank “Author name” field, rather than a site with passworded accounts: the name could be forged just as easily as the comment content, and the “comment” is the (author-name, content) pair. That would restore the screening-off property.
Oh, I’d say it didn’t. At least not to me, and judging from my memory of the comments, not to many others either.
That is, when I read the essay I thought: “Zack thinks that Oli and Duncan think X, and Zack thinks X is wrong. I think instead Oli and Duncan think X’, which is obviously true.”
Judging from this comment, you actually thought Oli and Duncan think X’, and you think X’ is wrong. And sure, after reading the essay I thought “Oli and Duncan think X’”, so arguably the essay transmitted that to me. But it felt more like the essay pointed me in a direction that let me generate the hypothesis myself, rather than actually transmitting the hypothesis to me.
Not sure if this is particularly a meaningful distinction.
Different in what respect?
This is kind of hard to answer because the distributions overlap, but they still seem like clearly different distributions to me. For example:
If I’m writing a post-like-thing, I need to come up with a topic, and I might change the topic half way through writing it. If I’m writing a comment-like-thing, I’m continuing with the topic that someone else started.
Post-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that I’ve picked myself is true/useful, comment-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that someone else picked is false/useless-or-harmful.
I’m more likely to try to come up with an analogy when writing a post-like-thing, and more likely to dive into an analogy when writing a comment-like-thing.
A post-like-thing usually can’t assume any one specific text as background knowledge. A comment-like-thing can typically assume the reader’s also read the thing I’m commenting on and knows the argument it’s making.
A post-like-thing is more likely to be written in the form of “fiction that communicates an idea” than a comment-like-thing is.
Hypothesis: even when you (i.e. Zack) write top-level posts, they’re typically towards the comment-like side of things, and that’s part of why it’s not clear to you that there’s a difference. For example, this top-level post is fairly comment-like.
It doesn’t need to, but should it?
Meh, not a conversation I feel like having.
To reiterate: you made an obviously-wrong argument for an obviously-wrong conclusion. (“For a given comment, the same bytes are written to the database regardless of the author. So the text screens off the author; that is, given the text, the effect on the reader can’t change depending on the author.”) And you know the conclusion is wrong, but you still left the wrong argument in the text, without pointing out where the mistake was or even that there must be a mistake, and that bugged me.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw in the post, but I felt like pointing at it and grumbling anyway.
Thanks for commenting!
Yes, in retrospect, I wish I had done a better job of flagging the metonymy. I’m glad the idea got through despite that.
Different in what respect? When I write a critical post (arguing that author X is wrong about Y1 because Z1), it feels like relevantly the same activity as when I write a “non-critical” post (just arguing that Y2 because Z2 without reference to any reputedly mistaken prior work) in terms of what cognitive skills I’m using: the substance is about working out how Zi implies Yi. That’s the aspect relevant to the playing/coaching metaphor. Whether there happens to be an X in the picture doesn’t seem to change the essential character of the work. (Right? Does your subjective assessment differ?)
It doesn’t need to, but should it? The section titled “However, Critic Contributions Can Inform Uncertain Estimates of Comment Value” describes one reason why it should. My bold philosophical claim is that that’s the only reason. (I’m counting gjm’s comment about known expertise as relevantly “the same reason.”)
Alternatively, for the purpose of the argument in that section, we can instead imagine that we’re talking about a blog where the commenting form has a blank “Author name” field, rather than a site with passworded accounts: the name could be forged just as easily as the comment content, and the “comment” is the (author-name, content) pair. That would restore the screening-off property.
Oh, I’d say it didn’t. At least not to me, and judging from my memory of the comments, not to many others either.
That is, when I read the essay I thought: “Zack thinks that Oli and Duncan think X, and Zack thinks X is wrong. I think instead Oli and Duncan think X’, which is obviously true.”
Judging from this comment, you actually thought Oli and Duncan think X’, and you think X’ is wrong. And sure, after reading the essay I thought “Oli and Duncan think X’”, so arguably the essay transmitted that to me. But it felt more like the essay pointed me in a direction that let me generate the hypothesis myself, rather than actually transmitting the hypothesis to me.
Not sure if this is particularly a meaningful distinction.
This is kind of hard to answer because the distributions overlap, but they still seem like clearly different distributions to me. For example:
If I’m writing a post-like-thing, I need to come up with a topic, and I might change the topic half way through writing it. If I’m writing a comment-like-thing, I’m continuing with the topic that someone else started.
Post-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that I’ve picked myself is true/useful, comment-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that someone else picked is false/useless-or-harmful.
I’m more likely to try to come up with an analogy when writing a post-like-thing, and more likely to dive into an analogy when writing a comment-like-thing.
A post-like-thing usually can’t assume any one specific text as background knowledge. A comment-like-thing can typically assume the reader’s also read the thing I’m commenting on and knows the argument it’s making.
A post-like-thing is more likely to be written in the form of “fiction that communicates an idea” than a comment-like-thing is.
Hypothesis: even when you (i.e. Zack) write top-level posts, they’re typically towards the comment-like side of things, and that’s part of why it’s not clear to you that there’s a difference. For example, this top-level post is fairly comment-like.
Meh, not a conversation I feel like having.
To reiterate: you made an obviously-wrong argument for an obviously-wrong conclusion. (“For a given comment, the same bytes are written to the database regardless of the author. So the text screens off the author; that is, given the text, the effect on the reader can’t change depending on the author.”) And you know the conclusion is wrong, but you still left the wrong argument in the text, without pointing out where the mistake was or even that there must be a mistake, and that bugged me.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw in the post, but I felt like pointing at it and grumbling anyway.