
The Internet has made defensive writers of us all - gourlaysama
http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing
======
swayvil
I see it every day.

For many people communication in online forums is an ego sport. They are here
to snipe and crush. If they can interpret your words in a way that makes you
look foolish, then that is the interpretation that they will speak to. If they
can find a literal inconsistency, then they will take the literal approach. If
you speak in contradiction of the conventional view then they will stand atop
castle conventionality and pour flaming oil on your head, laughing. If all
else fails they will point out grammatic errors.

I see people reacting to this environment. They are hesitant to let their
strange opinions dangle free. It definitely inhibits free communication.

I have faith that we will, as a society, pass through this fire and emerge
educated. We will all learn to just say "fuck it" and let our special sauce
flow.

~~~
tjradcliffe
One would hope we'll get over this, although it's been around as long as
online communication has. USENet was the prototype for the modern Web, and it
had all the problems we see today, at least in places. Trolls, harassment, the
Two-Minutes Hate... they all spread around the world via NNTP.

RA Lafferty wrote a story about how communication between humans in fact
involved telepathy. Speech was just an epiphenomenon. No one believed the
researchers, and so they developed a device that would suppress telepathic
communication between people, and the result was chaos because even though
people were still speaking the words, no one was understanding what was said.
It's a fun little piece, and I recommend it if you can find it. I remember
sometime in the early '90's thinking, "That's whats' going on with
newsgroups!"

People see the words and think they're communicating, but they aren't. If
you've ever tried to reproduce an experiment based on a description in a
scientific paper you'll realize how little information the words contain. Or
learn how to do something from a manual. There was a George O Smith story
about an ancient Martian device that was found with a manual the engineers
were able to translate, but they found the manual contained just enough
information to get them into trouble. Without the context of the engineering
culture where the device was used it didn't contain nearly enough information.
Smith was an electrical engineer, and knew what of he spoke.

These two factors: poverty of information and cultural context make
communication hard, even face to face. It is likely we'll get better at it
over time, and that will come mostly from appreciating each other's
differences and not assuming ignorance and idiocy every time anyone disagrees
with us (an attitude I struggle with still...)

~~~
walterbell
Any chance you recall the name of the Lafferty story, or other details about
it? He wrote ~200.

~~~
swayvil
I dunno about the specific story but after perusing Amazon I have concluded
that something is seriously wrong with the publishing system. The prices on
Lafferty's works are outrageous.

So here's the torrent. _R. A. Lafferty - Science Fiction Novels and Stories
(13 books)_

[http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/10671370/R._A._Lafferty_-
_Sci...](http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/10671370/R._A._Lafferty_-
_Science_Fiction_Novels_and_Stories_\(13_books\))

~~~
walterbell
Yes, it's not easy to track down his remarkable work. Centipede Press is
reissuing all of his short stories, but only in $100 premium editions with a
print run of 300 (!) copies. Of course, they sold out and the book is now only
available from scalpers for > $300.

See also [http://ralafferty.org](http://ralafferty.org)

~~~
walterbell
Found the story: "A Special Condition in Summit City"

[http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?67506](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-
bin/title.cgi?67506)

~~~
swayvil
thx

------
idlewords
"I’ve also taken to toning down any rhetorical flourishes that could be
interpreted uncharitably in a way that annoys some people. The result: boring
writing stripped of a lot of my own personal style"

I read this as "I've become a better writer". 99.99% of the time, what you
consider your unique, personal style is just bad writing.

~~~
bkirwi
\-- All good writers are alike; all bad writers are bad in their own way.

I'm not too sure about this... there are many ways to be a terrible writer,
but most good writers still seem to have a distinctive style. (Is it just that
99.99% of writing is bad writing? Oh, probably.)

~~~
jeorgun
I think this relates very directly to one of PG's essays¹:

    
    
        At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted
        most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try
        to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive
        way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way.
        Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was
        just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like
        Michelangelo.
    

It's much easier to be distinctive than to be good, so if you're trying to
optimize for the former you'll have a much harder time achieving the latter.

¹ [http://paulgraham.com/taste.html](http://paulgraham.com/taste.html)

------
danso
I have to agree with the other commenters that what this OP thinks of as
"defensive" writing is sometimes just better, more _nuanced_ writing.

For me, it just boils down to a tradeoff. Oh, you want _instant_ access and
the ability to influence the _billions_ of people who are on the Internet, and
to do it for _free_? Then don't expect the insulation you get when your
writing was previously restricted to a published journal or local newspaper
column.

Tangentially related: In the academic world, people have been abuzz about
Steven Salatia, a professor who was nearly in the door as a tenured professor
at University of Illinois until the board of trustees, made aware of his
stream of inflammatory tweets about Israel and Palestine, nixed the offer,
leaving Salatia without a job:

[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/09/10/steven-
salait...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/09/10/steven-salaita-
speaks-out-about-lost-job-offer-illinois)

Besides espousing the value of academic freedom, Salatia's defense has been:
_If you had only read my entire tweet stream, you would 've seen that I don't
hate Israel, and that my seemingly violent sentiments were just rhetorical
flourishes when viewed in context_.

Sure, I see his argument and I empathize with him. But he's being naive and
Pollyanish about communication. The world doesn't have time to explore your
mind-palace...each of us are already preoccupied with our own lives and
thoughts. If you wanted to make catchy soundbites over a complicated issue so
that you could catch our attention amidst the global debate, well, the other
side of catchy soundbites is that sometimes they catch you.

Frankly, I don't think the world loses much if, when it comes to complex
nuanced issues, we put down the Twitter client and put our thoughts in a
medium (no pun intended with Medium) intended for expansive discussion. Does
it slow you down? Sure. And that's a good thing.

~~~
emotionalcode
> The world doesn't have time to explore your mind-palace...

But they have time to search social media sites?

If someone wants to twist an argument around to attain the goal they desire,
you can take anything out of context and spin it in another direction.
Informal language is informal because of this - it never conveys a true
objectivity that can not be mutated with the slight of hand - and that
includes things that have been invented and things that have not been yet.

There are no real rules to communication, only guidelines that are often
informally adjusted via precedent. Politics is often a very tricky tightrope
to walk.

> Frankly, I don't think the world loses much if, when it comes to complex
> nuanced issues, we put down the Twitter client and put our thoughts in a
> medium (no pun intended with Medium) intended for expansive discussion. Does
> it slow you down? Sure. And that's a good thing.

I do. I think it makes people visually aware of how a collective sentiment can
build over small iterations of many dialogues. Maybe that would make people
more empathetic to people who have such seemingly inflammatory opinions, and
also not feel so alone in having fairly quirky ideas.

~~~
danso
> _But they have time to search social media sites?_

...er...yes? I mean, that's why social media sites are popular. To go beyond
text communication, that's why _Instagram_ is popular even though its photo
editing capabilities are less expansive and sophisticated than your camera +
GIMP. Social media sites demand little from the producer and the consumer,
which is partially why we are so inclined to spend time there instead of
writing full blog posts or letters to Mom.

Should society just acclimate itself to be less reactionary to social media
quips? Sure, but that's a bit of begging the question there. Social media
networks are so strong because they can cause such emotional reaction for such
little energy input. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I halfway assume
that there's something physiologically appealing about the whole process, and
that something would fight back against the ability for society to
collectively take a deep breath and patiently consume the stream of social
media.

You and I want both the same thing: patience and empathy in civic discourse.
But you have more faith than I do that it can/should happen even when the
scales are so lopsided: physically, it gets easier and easier to make and
disseminate our thoughts, but our ability to physically process such
information does not scale as well.

~~~
emotionalcode
> ...er...yes? I mean, that's why social media sites are popular.

They don't have time to think about how that person thinks, but they do have
time to search social media sites.

> Should society just acclimate itself to be less reactionary to social media
> quips?

I don't know? I am not sure what you mean by 'reactionary'.

> Social media networks are so strong because they can cause such emotional
> reaction for such little energy input.

I find that social networks require a moderate amount of energy input to
maintain a position I do not find disagreeable, but additionally find somewhat
insightful or valuable to offer (and here I must make some assumptions about
any reader, so I apologize).

> You and I want both the same thing: patience and empathy in civic discourse.

Yes. I just think discourse is very complicated.

> But you have more faith than I do that it can/should happen even when the
> scales are so lopsided:

It's not so much faith, as it is questioning inwardly.

> physically, it gets easier and easier to make and disseminate our thoughts
> but our ability to physically process such information does not scale as
> well.

I can't say I experience this position either. In the past I may have agreed
with you, so I am sure there is truth to your sentiment.

------
tkiley
This tendency toward defensive communication is a problem for me both online
and offline. Although to be honest, I see the exact opposite extreme as a
problem as well: hustler-type startup people tend to adopt an "offensive"
hyperbolic communication style that can be just as disruptive.

Over the years I have come to appreciate pg's essays as an example of the
happy medium: he doesn't pull punches, but he doesn't generalize to the point
of hyperbole either, and I find his writing style to be more effective because
of this balance.

------
tcopeland
I go back and forth with prefixing my own blog posts - especially the softer
ones, like this one on preserving technical knowledge
[http://thomasleecopeland.com/2014/10/01/preserving-
technical...](http://thomasleecopeland.com/2014/10/01/preserving-technical-
knowledge.html) \- with disclaimers like "I think" and "from what I've seen",
and so forth. Saying "I think" in a blog post that I wrote feels redundant; of
course I think this otherwise I wouldn't have written it. But more frequently
it's an accurate reflection of how I feel about a topic. In the post above,
I'm not making a dogmatic statement that "diagrams are bad", but I'm saying
that face to face interviews have been more effective for me.

~~~
hyperpape
That is hard, but you can be more specific: "In my experience," "I'm confident
that", "sometimes it seems", "it is an absolute law that", "there are some
circumstances where", "it's hard to balance these considerations, but I...",
"I will fight you and your entire family if you disagree".

------
hyperpape
I don't buy this. First, instead of defensive writers, I see people--though
I'm not talking about this author--whining that their unclear writing is being
"misinterpreted" when it turns out they've implied something dumb.

Second, while I appreciate stylish and direct writing, I'll take bloated but
well reasoned writing if I have to. The world is full of writers who "have no
ideas, and the ability to express them", but that doesn't help us. Precision
and careful thought often push us towards difficult and ugly writing.

Edit: the worst kind of hedge is the one that makes your opinion harder to
understand. I'm guilty of adding that pointless "almost" and I've been
struggling to overcome that habit for a long time.

~~~
tjradcliffe
My solution to this has been to learn to write like a Bayesian, which is a
useful project because it helps me think like a Bayesian.

The first step in this is to recognize the goal: it is not to prove some
proposition true or false, but to show that some proposition is more
plausible, given the evidence, than the alternatives. The alternatives should
always number more than one, because single-alternative arguments are recipes
for false dichotomies and oppositional dynamics, neither of which are useful.

Science--which is the discipline of publicly applying Bayesian reasoning to
the results of systematic observation and controlled experiment--is not about
proof or truth or falsity. It is about plausibility. This fundamentally
changes the goal of any intellectual enterprise.

I liken philosopher's quest for "certainty" to alchemist's search for the
secret of turning base metals into gold: despite the many interesting things
they learned along the way, the goal itself was based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of the nature of knowledge, which is evidence-based and
therefore inherently uncertain. A certain proposition is one that is immune to
any further evidence, conceivable or inconceivable (because what we can
conceive has nothing to do with what is real). The name for such propositions
is "faith", and to a Bayesian this is an epistemic error.

Once we've abandoned the impossible and wrong-headed goal of turning base
metals into gold... err... of achieving certainty... we're in a position of
acknowledging our priors (which are explicitly represented in Bayesian
reasoning: you can't do it without them) and adducing our evidence.
Differences of opinion may come down to differences in priors: "I find your
evidence for Israel's war crimes unconvincing because I believe anti-Zionists
dominate the international news media." Such revelations at least make it
clear what we should be arguing with the person about. If we differ radically
in our priors, arguing about the posterior plausibility of a particular
proposition is probably useless.

If you do all this right (I'm still learning, always learning) it won't come
across as hedging, but as reasoning. This is the joy of abandoning the alchemy
of certainty.

------
andrewflnr
There are a couple related issues at hand. I agree that hedging and weasel
phrases are an issue. It's too easy to write content-free noise. The classic
example in my mind is someone trying to sound "deep" who makes a statement
like "Sometimes X..." without saying anything about how to identify such times
out what to do about them. However, when this is a problem, it's one of not
enough precision, not too much. The goal is to try to write a statement that
fits all possible evidence, and so can't be proven wrong, ignoring that it's
useless for the same reason.

Defensive writing, on the other hand, is generally a good thing. Precision and
careful logic are essential in writing. We don't have the benefit of physical
emotional cues. Common sense isn't common, and even if it was there are so
many perspectives on the web that you at least need to be thinking about the
potential for misunderstanding. You need to try to head off trivial or
otherwise unproductive avenues of debate. These are all responsibilities of
conscientious communicators. And if you find yourself using a lot of vague
language, it's probably better not to say anything. Any other policy is
willfully contributing to the proliferation of BS on the web.

Reality is messy so sometimes you have to use imprecise language to describe
it. In that case, it may be helpful to try to precisely specify how imprecise
you mean to be, or use some other more specific phrase than "sometimes X" or
"sort of Y". If it needs to be said, you can usually find a way to add more
information.

------
Mz
_But I wish we’d reflect honestly on whether this level of precision is really
warranted in all cases and whether such precision always needs to be
completely nailed down up front. Maybe we could all try to exercise a little
“ordinary charity” and have a simple conversation sometimes._

For some subjects, the precision is absolutely warranted. Good communication
requires people to be on the same page. One of the issues with the Internet is
that you can have an extremely diverse audience, and this creates
communication challenges that you don't have (or rarely will have) in
meatspace. One of the things I have been working on is audience development
and how to get my message to the people ready to hear it or who have the
background or whatever. This is a challenging thing to do online. Figuring out
a means to segment out your audience will help reintroduce the ability to
"just have a conversation."

 _Sadly, I don’t have any concrete proposals and am unsure what to do about
all this, but… er, I welcome your comments._

Aside from segmenting out your audience and engaging in audience
development/education, which is kind of a different thing, you can model
respectful communication and social formality. Social formality is useful in
situations where we know little about another person. Given the high diversity
you run into online, this is one of the antidotes to the problem.

(Though, really, I am torn about posting this comment for other reasons, one
of them being that I often feel like I give away my best ideas and can't
figure out how to get money out of what I do. SIGH. Money is a chronic source
of stress in my life. :-/ )

------
forrestthewoods
Comments on the internet are the worst. The majority of comments on technical
posts are internet dingleberries who are trying to prove they are smarter than
the OP. The more advanced the post the more people come out of the woodwork.

For these reasons my goal for blog posts is high views, low comments. It means
you talked about an interesting topic and covered it so thoroughly there was
nothing left to be said on the matter.

~~~
arjie
Internet comments, and HN is no exception, are often about proving how smart
the writer of the comment is. But I feel like it's the opposite of what you
describe: Discussions on complex technical subjects are sparse because only
the well informed can participate.

Posts like this one spawn larger threads because everyone has an opinion that
sounds plausible. It's sort of the same phenomenon that leads to a problem
requiring great expertise to understand and solve having lower votes on Stack
Overflow compared to something telling you to add a semicolon.

Still, optimizing for fewest comments while successfully describing the
subject sounds like a great strategy.

------
beloch
Writing serves many purposes. Often we read to be entertained. Other times we
wish to be informed. Personal flair is fine and good when we are writing to
entertain, but precision and honesty are even better when we write to inform.

One significant thing the internet has done is to allow scientists and
engineers to communicate directly with general audiences without journalists,
etc. acting as mediators. Where a journalist might make a false claim because
it feels stronger or more compelling, a scientist or engineer will usually add
honest qualifications so as not to deceive. Perhaps it is from this new,
direct dialogue with non-journalists that the general public has learned to
write in this style.

Another possible source of this style is politics. The U.S. is far from the
only country where partisan politics have taken root. Parties opposed to one
another often have very similar platforms and policies because they know very
well what appeals to the majority. With few major differences in policy to
distinguish themselves from their opponents, they must instead rely on
personality. With that comes the practice of pouncing on an opponents tiniest
slip of the tongue (or pen) to chip away at their credibility. Thus,
politicians must be as careful as scientists to leave no room for deliberate
misinterpretation of their words. We no doubt emulate the defensive
communication style of our leaders to at least some degree.

However defensive writing has slipped into the mainstream, it combines with
the anonymity of the internet to allow anyone to appear credible beyond their
qualifications, provided they are careful. The spirit of scientific peer
review, the example of our leaders' incessant jockeying for credibility, and
awareness of the fallibility of writers have all encouraged the general public
to read with a skeptical eye. The written word is no longer above suspicion.
If something we read contains even just one error, can we trust the rest of
it? People don't just write defensively now, they read defensively too, and
for good reason!

Content now rules over style in most spheres of writing. I find myself
nitpicking even fiction these days. It sometimes takes conscious effort to
suspend disbelief and simply enjoy a good story in spite of the writer's
inability to simulate reality without error. Perhaps we have lost something.
However, we have also gained much. Writers are becoming more accountable to
the truth and readers are less likely to be duped by lies than ever. Perhaps
all that is missing is for honest mistakes to become more acceptable so that
writers may be free to take worthy risks without paralyzing fear.

------
BariumBlue
I think being aware and conscious of what you write isn't necessarily a bad
thing.

More ever, internet-writing encourages short, clear and concise sentences and
argument points which is a very useful and necessary skill in any social
context.

------
cousin_it
Damn internet! Always cramping my style!

Blog posts are inherently short-form writing, optimized for getting to the top
of Reddit. You have to make bold claims to attract readers, and avoid detailed
arguments so they don't fall asleep. See Joel Spolsky's description of the
Internet Pundit style of writing here:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/backIssues-2010-03.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/backIssues-2010-03.html)

If you want your writing to have value beyond the popularity game, and
contribute to the state of the art somehow, I think careful reasoning is
indispensable for that.

------
r0s
What we see here is the death of broadcast communication.

Print, Radio and Television are granted a monopoly of audience attention. (If
you can pay the gatekeepers.)

Now the loudest voices face a real crowd, people who will return the volley.

Does this hold us to a higher standard? Is the end of one-way broadcast the
real death of journalism as we know it? I hope so.

------
DrDimension
"Find the insight, not the error."

Unfortunately, people on the internet seem to do the opposite.

For a given domain, some people want to learn new things, while others just
want to defend their current level of knowledge. Ultimately where a comment
adds value depends on whether it is motivated by the former or the latter.

------
bmh100
A more in depth analysis is really needed. What the author does not adequately
address is the origin of these behaviors. Writing online is public and global.
Holding an unpopular view or offending the wrong group can cost a job or end a
career.

------
melvinmt
It's not just comments, it's also the permanent nature of the internet that
will keep haunting your Google results for years if you don't choose your
words carefully.

------
optimiz3
Often times you can judge the sophistication of an author by the aspects they
do and do not take for granted.

...and sometimes you have to call critics the pedantic nitwits that they are.

~~~
swayvil
That's ad hom and anarchistic. All bile must be veiled. That's an unspoken
rule I think. Or maybe just the limits of convenient moderation.

~~~
chenelson
Or perhaps you're simply hiding...and we'd all be better off with your full
and honest input.

"This is Culture!"

------
seventytwo
That font is awful...

~~~
Stratoscope
You're right, and I hope you don't get downvoted for saying it. I can imagine
someone thinking "Why are you complaining about a side issue instead of
commenting on the OP's message?"

But the font _is_ the message, or part of it: this entire message is delivered
through the font it's displayed in.

And if you can't _read_ the message because of a bad font, what else about it
matters?

I only viewed the page in Chrome, but I did try three different machines and
OSes. It's a bit hard to read - thin and gray - on a MBP Retina. Very hard to
read on a Galaxy Note 3. And a complete mess on a ThinkPad W520 (145DPI
display) - extremely thin and gray with malformed characters - look at the
lowercase "g" for example. The missing strokes get filled in if you zoom in
closer, but even at 175% the font is still too thin and washed out.

Not enjoyable reading on any of these devices!

