Heh. I actually thought your reworded quote was better formulated and more convincing than my original post. Then I went back to look at it to realize that oh yeah, some of that was a straight copy from what I said back then. It may have been because your quote was more concise and to the point, while my post was more rambling. (Though obviously there’s also the possibility of subconsciously recognizing those as my thoughts, and a “that must be a smart guy for sharing my suspicions” reaction.)
I’ve actually found that I often give the criticism of outsiders extra weight compared to that of insiders, exactly because they’re less likely to be blinded by the communal biases and groupthink. Of course, this assumes that their critiques are basically coherent and don’t start out with misunderstanding the very basic concepts.
A probably related phenomenon—I’ve noticed that if I’m writing something that’s supposed to be persuasive, I sometimes like the first draft and consider it pretty solid. Then I imagine showing it to a certain rather critical friend of mine, and try to imagine what she’d say about it, and suddenly I see a lot of weak points that need more justification.
Heh. I actually thought your reworded quote was better formulated and more convincing than my original post. Then I went back to look at it to realize that oh yeah, some of that was a straight copy from what I said back then. It may have been because your quote was more concise and to the point, while my post was more rambling. (Though obviously there’s also the possibility of subconsciously recognizing those as my thoughts, and a “that must be a smart guy for sharing my suspicions” reaction.)
I’ve actually found that I often give the criticism of outsiders extra weight compared to that of insiders, exactly because they’re less likely to be blinded by the communal biases and groupthink. Of course, this assumes that their critiques are basically coherent and don’t start out with misunderstanding the very basic concepts.
A probably related phenomenon—I’ve noticed that if I’m writing something that’s supposed to be persuasive, I sometimes like the first draft and consider it pretty solid. Then I imagine showing it to a certain rather critical friend of mine, and try to imagine what she’d say about it, and suddenly I see a lot of weak points that need more justification.