
Persuade xor Discover, Parkinson Remix - brlewis
http://paulgraham.com/pxdremix.html
======
timwiseman
I am speculating, but I believe this was because so many people focused on the
Michael Arrington reference which was just a starting point, not the main
focus of the essay.

By switching that to something completely noncontroversial (a bicycle shed
which may not even exist physically) he was showing how you can come to the
same conclusion without the lightning rod in there, and also at the same time
emphasizing what he was really writing about.

------
mquander
I don't think people "missed the point" of the original. Rather, a lot of
people prefer talking about Michael Arrington's personality instead of talking
about technique in writing and communication. Essays do not come with Taser-
equipped topicality guardians that electrocute you if you don't talk about
what the writer thought you might talk about.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Is there an in-joke here? I can see the difference between this and the
original, but who is Parkinson, and why is this a remix?

There's something I'm not understanding. Am I the only one?

~~~
mattyb
See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=839237>

and here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality>

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Ah. Definitely insider knowledge, although no doubt widely known in
appropriate circles.

Thank you.

------
mrshoe
What I learned from the comments (and comment voting) on the first version:
surprisingly, the HN community is more passionate in their disdain for Mike
Arrington than they are in their worship of pg.

Hopefully this article will allow people to focus on the real points of the
first, because he explored some interesting territory there.

~~~
scott_s
An alternate conclusion is that given the opportunity to discuss two ideas,
where one is inflammatory and simple, and the other is abstract and nuanced,
people tend towards the inflammatory. Conversations, then, are like physical
systems: they tend to find the lowest energy point.

------
gojomo
Doesn't remixing the article to eliminate a distraction from the main point
suggest PG actually _is_ trying to persuade with this piece?

~~~
ecuzzillo
Maybe, but the identified harm was adding fluff in order to persuade. If you
subtract mostly irrelevant if colorful anecdotes, you keep the point and the
concision, basically making it more persuasive for free.

~~~
gojomo
And yet, this version's cryptic title and bikeshed-cliche-intro only make
sense when considered in contrast to the original.

So while one message sent by this version is "look again at the part I thought
I was important", another message is, "wow, that 'bikeshed' was a powerful
distraction". That calls yet more attention to the 'bikeshed' itself -- both
the specific instance and the general phenomenon -- and the author's own self-
conscious rhetorical choices about how to influence readers.

The many levels of semi-contradictory subtext are making my head spin!

------
raphar
I appreciate the change. I almost abandoned the essay when I saw it was going
to talk about Mike Arrington. Luckly I continued reading, and enjoyed it full.

The question that remains in the back of my mind is: is this an intent of
pleasing me (as an audience)?. The other question is: Is Mike's anti-fan base
so big that this remix is useful?

Above all, I enjoyed reading the original article and liked the remix.

------
lliiffee
This would seem a less... sarcastic if the author had tried in good faith to
find another real example, rather than woundedly choosing something
deliberately boring.

~~~
scott_s
The color of bike sheds has special meaning in the technical community.

~~~
lliiffee
Yes, and it is a very sarcastic choice. The author implies that Arrington was
just a totally arbitrary choice in the previous article, absolutely irrelevant
to his point, and this is more than a little disingenuous.

------
gojomo
How dare you call MA a bikeshed!

------
thunk
There's another reason people "dislike" the color of the bike shed: they love
participatory righteous indignation, and the bike shed's color is something
convenient to complain about. That so many bike sheds are this color makes me
think that people enjoy complaining about things more than they actually
dislike the color.

------
kingkawn
It strikes me as very male to disregard the presence and feelings of others in
the pursuit of making a point.

------
thunk
Invoking Parkinson's Law is incorrect. That would require Arrington to be
uninteresting, and your main point to be intimidatingly profound, neither of
which are true. This was plain old Distraction By Shiny Objects. I think "see
randomness" applies here.

------
wglb
Well, this is not a simple substitution in the original. There are entire
paragraphs removed. The ending remains pretty much the same.

I am not getting the point.

~~~
iamwil
Basically, the XOR essay he wrote wasn't at all about Arrington. It was merely
a starting point for the real point of the essay--why pg writes the way he
does and the reasons for doing so.

However, there are certain things that just set people off--even if it has
nothing to do with the main point--and go off on a berserker rant. In this
case, people disagreed with the reason pg gave about why people thought
Arrington was unfriendly.

So then the question is, does pg's essay still hold up and make sense about
the reasons why he writes the way he does, if Arrington was unfriendly for a
different reason than what pg gave?

One way to test it is if you replaced the entire section about Arrington with
a similar analogy and see if the essay still holds up.

Pg decided to pick one about Parkinson's bike shed color as a nice little
meta-commentary about how we are arguing about things that don't matter to the
main point of the essay.

------
robertduncan
XOR is not an English word. The either...or construct is used to be explicit
with regards to mutual exclusivity.

------
JulianMorrison
Does "persuasion" even work? To me it just comes across as smarmy.

