
The internet has made defensive writers of us all - dkarapetyan
https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.html
======
kornish
A great quote from the article:

"The defensive writing style also encourages another sort of ugliness, which
is that “avoiding saying something wrong” becomes a primary focus of the
writing, rather than communicating or exploring ideas which the author might
himself be unsure of."

One thing that's great about Gwern Branwen's writing is that Gwern's essays
are accompanied by a "belief tag". That tag gives the ability to say "This
essay is exploratory; I don't have a high degree of confidence that it's
canonically true." Details here: [http://www.gwern.net/About#belief-
tags](http://www.gwern.net/About#belief-tags)

Having the option to dissociate ideas from one's person can give a lot of
freedom to put contrarian ideas out there and spark debate in search of the
Truth without fearing personal attack. Indeed, one of the things that I
consider to make a healthy company culture is that ideas can be criticized
without the people behind the ideas feeling criticized themselves.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
It's one of the surprising side-effects of the Internet that anything
whatsoever you might say in a public forum can potentially offend someone,
somewhere, somehow.

~~~
proksoup
I recently watched Slavoj Zizek speak about how political correctness is a
more complete totalitarianism.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tndXr-
oQxxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tndXr-oQxxA)

I am optimistic the video has some relevance to this discussion.

~~~
m52go
Mises recently published an excellent article on this topic, titled "PC is
About Control, Not Etiquette"

[https://mises.org/library/pc-about-control-not-
etiquette-0](https://mises.org/library/pc-about-control-not-etiquette-0)

~~~
jxramos
"PC is best understood as propaganda" what a bold statement! I like this
critical exploration of the whole concept of PC, pretty fascinating.

------
grellas
I find internet writing to be stimulating in its own way precisely because it
is a sort of dash-off writing that does not need to be as precise or exact as
would be needed if you were seeking to meet professional standards.

To wit, in law, even in formal contexts, lawyers dish off all sorts of slop in
legal briefs, etc. but this really is sub-standard lawyering. To do your job
right, you need to meet standards of excellence in making sure you have sound
analysis, careful factual recitation, and skilled application of law to facts
as you make arguments or seek to achieve some other professional writing goal.
This is true as well in less formal professional settings such as writing
emails/letters to clients. It may not absolutely matter what you say in terms
of precision if a client is not likely to pick up the fine points but it
really does matter in terms of maintaining a consistent pride in your
professional work. Slop is slop and, when people will evaluate you by how well
you are representing a client, it is critical not to be slipshod in your
writing.

When writing on the internet, in contrast, you of course want to avoid putting
out slop there as well but a lot less precision is needed to make your points.
If you make a legal point, it is implied by context that you are making a
statement that may not be accurate down to the finest level of detail, that
you may be simplifying, or generalizing, or simply venting an opinion that the
law may or may not support. Law in itself will vary, even greatly, from
jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and this means that much of what you may be
saying is really setting forth broad principles while avoiding a specific
application to a given case. For these purposes, there is no need to be
defensive, not in the slightest. And I certainly try not to be. Am I ever
wrong? Of course, on occasion, yes - I have had a doozie or two in my time,
perhaps a number of them. But you try to feel secure about such lapses,
knowing that we all err occasionally, and try as a whole to conform to an
overall solid record of being as accurate and insightful as possible. While
you get the occasional harsh attack, for the most part I have found that
people will be charitable knowing that you may have spent no more than 10 or
15 minutes trying to address a sometimes complex topic. Better to give people
the benefit of your insights if it is an area where you can do so than it is
to leave something in the internet conversion that is wrong or off simply
hanging out there. That is a great benefit of the internet. Back in the day,
you had to dig deep to find out what people with expertise in their field were
thinking and access to this was severely limited. The internet has changed all
that. There may be a lot of slop out there but there are also many gems that
are there for the taking. As writers, we should be ready to share, if not
gems, at least our best thoughts on topics where people might find them
helpful.

If I were to stray from my professional topics, then maybe I would be more
defensive as well. But the author of this piece emphasizes how the internet
may hinder academic writing and I see legal writing as at least broadly
similar. So, my experience differs pretty markedly.

Just my two cents.

------
WalterBright
One of the common methods people use to attack posts with ideas they don't
agree with is to take the prose literally. This is much like the "work to
rule" form of protest that unions use, and the "letter of the law" rather than
the spirit of it, and of course all those "zero tolerance" policies.

~~~
jsprogrammer
One approach to resolving this would be to not make statements that are
literally not true and to correct statements that are literally not true to
not be literally not true.

~~~
hluska
That creates bland writing and the process of correcting every little
deviation is so pedantic that it provides a strong incentive to stop writing.
Both of these problems result in a world where we learn less, grow less, and
take fewer risks with our writing.

What is wrong with truly being charitable, assuming the absolute best
intentions and giving writers the license to deviate a little to let them make
a point?

~~~
jsprogrammer
Nothing is wrong with being charitable. Some statements are just wrong, or
there is no assumption of best intentions that can satisfy the claims being
made.

What is wrong with not writing blatantly false statements or calling out wrong
statements for being wrong (or, asking for a correction)?

There is a reason compilers cannot take arbitrary text and produce the program
you are 'actually' thinking of.

~~~
khedoros
"Perfect is the enemy of good", perfection isn't always necessary for
effective communication, and the perceived intent of the writer usually
matters more. If you think the writer is trying to mislead someone, or they
said something that you think will lead to misunderstandings of something
important, then call them out or ask for a correction. I took the post as
being more about "the writer didn't cover all the edge cases" than about "the
writer wrote something intentionally false/wrong/misleading".

~~~
hluska
Very nicely written!! :)

------
OvidStavrica
I am fairly new to Y-Combinators Hacker News. Unfortunately, I've run head-
long into this very issue on this forum. It ruins the experience.

There is value in communicating figuratively and/or with metaphors. When
creatively solving problems, looking for trends or drawing a hypothesis out of
the ether, it is often desirable to avoid specifics.

In my opinion, one's inability to comprehend and respond to any given
statement at multiple levels limits their upward mobility.

~~~
linkregister
I think that HN is one of the rare forums where this article doesn't apply.

Usually the top comment in a particular thread contains the least hedges and
most enthusiastically espouses a particular opinion. The comment is not
usually overly bombastic (though it sometimes is). The comment almost always
adopts the majority opinion on HN.

Posting a comment not aligned with the majority opinion carries a risk of at
most -4 points. I assert that downvotes more often correlate with disagreement
than failure to abide by the standards of discourse. Since the penalty is
limited, _that 's okay_.

Therefore, if visibility and replies are your goal (who wants to comment
without interesting replies?), then it's best to write boldly and concisely
with a minimum of hedges.

~~~
scrollaway
It's not just the downvotes. They don't help, but it's also the responses.

There is a major psychological effect from getting _attacked_ for stating an
opinion you might hold to heart. As an avid reddit/hn commenter, I feel it
often.

I don't really care if someone disagrees with me on something minor, but if
it's something I truly believe is important and I see people disagreeing with
it left and right and downvoting anything in line with that opinion, it makes
me feel weakness and despair.

Weakness: I am overwhelmed by the people disagreeing with me. I can't answer
everybody. Not because I don't have the arguments but because it's pointless,
won't lead anywhere and will achieve nothing but make me look insane. The
"hivemind" effects makes widely-held opinions even stronger and minority
opinions even weaker. Alone, I am powerless to counter that.

Despair: Let's say someone thinks gays/black/women/whatever shouldn't [have
some human right]. You truly believe that's wrong. If someone says to me "I
think women shouldn't have the right to vote" and is impossible to convince, I
feel pretty awful about it. I feel like that person is contributing in making
the world worse, and I live in that world.

Now what if that's not about some minority-held opinion, but about something
far more widespear? What if it's, for example, similarly insensitive and
disgusting comments about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around
that person, I feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it.
I'm quite afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like
I'm looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it.

My fiancée is a muslim. This is empathy kicking in. Not everything affects me
that way, but I'm far less likely to comment on something I don't hold to
heart.

But yes, I do enjoy HN because the hivemind effect is far more limited. The
hidden downvotes and sorting algorithms are a million times better than
Reddit's. It's not ideal, but it's still an excellent place to have discussion
and a "good enough" place to have debates.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Hey, thanks for opening up!

Yes, there is a psychological risk you take when you state an opinion on a
topic that is important to you. The more important, the more disagreement
hurts.

There isn't much one can do about opinions of others. We all try to keep
things civil here, but it doesn't always work. Not immediately, at least. I
remember the discussions after the last Paris attack; some comments were awful
and literally heartbreaking, and I too was feeling a mix of anger and despair.

> _What if it 's, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments
> about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around that person, I
> feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I'm quite
> afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I'm
> looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it._

I recognize that feeling. Frankly, I prefer hanging on HN so much because it
sometimes seems like one of the last few bastions of sanity on the planet.
Back after Paris, my Facebook feed was _literally_ breaking my heart, and it
was HN that reminded me that not everyone holds harmful beliefs.

Anyway, when you see knee-jerk attacks and hurtful behavior, I recommend
judicious use of the downvote and flag buttons. That's what they're for, and
they seem to work pretty well at keeping the discourse at proper level.

Best wishes to you and your fiancée. Stay strong!

------
resu_nimda
There is another perspective to this, which is to appreciate when others have
put forth a well-considered argument, and to sometimes relish in the challenge
of anticipating the rebuttals and shoring up leaks in your reasoning. Often I
will write something out that is somewhat critical, and then I'll think about
where people might attack it, and it ends up with a more measured position. I
love David Foster Wallace because he was the king of considering all facets of
an argument or idea so thoroughly that you can't tell which side he's on (and
neither could he).

I would say that the people with the problem that this article describes are
the good ones, and they are outnumbered and drowned out in our society by
"loudmouths" who don't obsessively consider their statements and who do
present their own thoughts and beliefs as factual and/or morally correct, so I
would say please do keep qualifying everything and even promoting that type of
"defensive" thinking. (The caveat is: don't cater to trolls and the willfully
uncharitable, and you have to decide for yourself whether someone is trolling
or genuinely trying to make an argument worth responding to [or both], it's
tough these days!)

I often think about qualifications like "I believe that...", "It is my opinion
that...", "I think that...". Some people argue that they're not necessary,
it's implied and obvious, it makes you seem weak, etc., but I disagree. I see
so many conflicts created by people communicating their beliefs as facts, and
it's not at all obvious that they acknowledge the viability of other opinions.

------
kelukelugames
As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick. Coming up with counter-examples is
the default response. Instead, I try to say a supporting example first. This
helps me learn from other people's point of view.

Edit: Though I admit I don't do the best job on HN. :/

~~~
mhurron
> As engineers, we are hardwired to nitpick.

This is just not true. You are not 'hard wired' to react in such a specific
manner, and being an engineer does not mean ripping things apart.

You may be an engineer and choose to make a joke about something. You may be
an engineer and something may make you go off and learn about something you
didn't know about before. You may be an engineer and react in all sorts of
ways to soemthing, nitpick is only one possible outcome.

~~~
angersock
Your comment here rather illustrates the point, I think. :)

~~~
iamcurious
Interesting. So to convince people to disagree I should voice agreement?

------
jbob2000
Context is really important in communication. When speaking with someone face
to face, you pick up on vocal intonations and body language to give you
context to their speech. As well, knowing someone personally gives context to
what they are saying.

On the internet, you have none of those things, only text. I think we are
hitting a wall with our written languages because they can't adequately
communicate context. Emoticons are a great evolution in this respect, because
I can assign emotional context to some writing with a simple set of characters
:).

~~~
tacos
I liked this exact comment when I first read it back in 1985. At least now I
can upvote it. That's progress.

~~~
theseatoms
How about more voting dimensions?

------
rm_-rf_slash
I get the feeling a reactionary effect has been an increase of traffic on
anonymous image boards like 4chan. There the only value you have is in your
argument; there is no profile to judge.

People can say whatever they want there - and they certainly do - but if their
argument is invalid or poorly constructed it is shot down or ignored, which
serves as a lesson about the strength of a point made in a sterile
environment. Of course there are plenty of trolls and people who argue the
opposite point for the lulz, but that's just a cost of the medium.

There is no perfect form of communication. If there was, we'd all be using it.

~~~
hobs
Even though I have long ago given up imageboards, this is basically what I
came to say. If you think the problem of self censorship due to judgement is
the problem, publish anonymously and go hog wild.

I would much rather we have an anonymous set of opinions (because to be quite
honest, I will never meet most of you, or be able to connect on a personal
level, even if you are awesome) than a people looking to appeal to the crowd.

Unfortunately on 4chan et all this ends up making certain ideas the same as an
established figure, ideas(memes in this community) which propagate whether or
not they are good, just because they are established.

------
kobayashi
For those interested in the Steven Pinker article, "Why Academics Stink at
Writing", and are looking to avoid the paywall, here's the direct link to PDF
from his website:
[http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_sti...](http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_stink_at_writing.pdf?m=1412010988)

------
kelukelugames
I feel compelled to write about race issues because I am a person of color.
The issues directly impact my life. But I'm afraid because readers might be
pissed off enough to get me fired. :/

~~~
puredemo
Excuse my ignorance but do Asians "count" as people of color? I thought that
usually referred to Latinos and African Americans?

I know that university admissions PoC _don 't_ include Asians, in fact most
admissions standards are stacked against them.

~~~
kelukelugames
Yes, I am a person of color. The dictionary definition of people of color is
any non whites.

Edit: There is a long explanation of why Asians are sometimes excluded. The
short answer is racism against Asians.

~~~
puredemo
It sounds like you're saying it's fine to be racist against whites, but
offensive to do the same thing to your personal "in-group." Little ironic,
lol.

~~~
delecti
Often, when people are referring to racism, they're referring specifically to
Institutional racism. As a general rule (because everything is naturally full
of gray areas) it's considered to be impossible for whites to experience
institutional racism in countries where we're the majority. So while a PoC
could certainly be bigoted against whites, it wouldn't be accurate to say that
they're inflicting institutional racism on them.

~~~
13thLetter
" As a general rule (because everything is naturally full of gray areas) it's
considered to be impossible for whites to experience institutional racism in
countries where we're the majority."

Sorry, what? Considered by whom? Because we should have a word with these
people about how unimaginative they are.

For one thing, there are plenty of ways a member of group X could experience
institutional racism in an X-majority country. Perhaps they live in a
Y-dominated region of the country, or work for a Y-owned company, or group Y
has more political/economic/cultural power in society despite being a
minority, or they work for an organization whose policy is to hire and promote
Y preferentially.

More generally, I don't see the purpose of desperately insisting that
institutional racism _can never_ affect group X. To say that group X can be
harmed certainly doesn't mean that group Y isn't harmed _more_. It's a weird
and pointless linguistic game that harms the purpose of achieving equality of
opportunity by gratuitously driving away allies.

~~~
delecti
I know it's lazy to just link to a Wikipedia article on the subject, but I'm
going to anyway, because I'm too lazy to address all the things in your post
when you can do your own research.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism)

The fact is, the occasional inconvenience on whites in America (as a
convenient example) from occasional pockets of bigoted blacks is fundamentally
different from the regular impact on blacks from the institutionalized racist
tendencies in society.

------
russellbeattie
Every YouTube creator has to do this now as well. They "apologize in advance"
or qualify just about everything they say to make sure they don't get
eviscerated in comments in case they make a mistake or were even just slightly
wrong. It's becoming so common, I see it seeping into every day conversation
in younger (like 13yo) kids. Not that everyone should go around spouting
ignorant opinion, but being terrified of being incorrect isn't good either.

------
danharaj
Different perspective: The cost of being wrong is overstated. The cost of
offending someone is overstated. Being told you're wrong isn't the worst thing
in the world. Being told you've said something offensive won't set you on
fire.

I used to be afraid of being told I was wrong or offensive. I took it
personally. Now I try to shrug it off and take it as legitimate feedback that
doesn't compromise my self-esteem or integrity. Being told you're wrong is
better than being wrong and never told you're wrong. Being told you're
offensive is enormously better than never being told who you're putting off
with your behavior. This holds _even when you take into account the
unjustified negative feedback_.

I try to avoid thinking less of someone for thinking I was wrong, or being
offended by what I've done. If I do that, I'm distorting my social reality: I
am penalizing people for telling me negative things. I am penalizing people
for caring that I'm wrong. I'm penalizing people for telling me that my
behavior hurts them. By protecting my ego, I would be hurting my relationships
with my peers and social groups.

This is not to say I'm not emotional about the responses I receive. I am quite
emotional. If I'm writing in a dry tone, I probably just woke up and don't
have access to all my senses yet. In fact I think writing without emotional
color is a form of defensiveness: It is yet another way for a writer to hedge
and separate themself from their opinion and their reader. I'd rather be close
to my words and my listeners than safe from criticism.

------
noonespecial
The phenomenon of the nitpicky someone-on-the-internet-is-wrong type comment
is so prevalent, I thing we need an acronym like tl;dr for it.

How about "willful misinterpretation; doesn't justify response"?

Wm;djr

~~~
zem
or bf;wr (bad faith; won't respond). i prefer the term "bad faith" since it
covers more cases than "wilful misinterpretation"; i've been using it to good
effect on facebook to disengage with malicious arguments, though i didn't
think of acronyming it.

~~~
openfuture
I like the ;wr part (won't respond) better than the ;djr (looks complex).

But we should make sure to decide on a single one* to use, I like a bit of
both: wm;wr cause of symmetry.

*maybe it would be more effective to have multiple and see if any of them catch on but I feel like it'll just cause unnessecary confusion

------
auganov
I've been thinking about that quiet a bit lately. My two random thoughts:

1\. I don't think it's strictly bad. More pressure to build coherent and
precise arguments is good. It can indeed yield unnecessarily verbose language
but I don't think it has to? Inserting qualifiers etc. everywhere is just the
most naive way of approaching it, like a newbie programmer using too many
nested if statements.

2\. We should assume all comments are charitable as well. They are no
different, they're just as likely to be misread.

~~~
ghaff
I do agree with 1. 2 is optimistic.

Depending on the situation, some "weasel words" (may, could, probably, etc.)
or other ways of adding some fuzz to your arguments are appropriate. But
formulating cogent and precise arguments with defensible data and references
is better when possible.

------
CurtMonash
I find this whole line of reasoning to be dubious, unimaginative, and sad.

Few people would call me a drab or unopinionated writer. Yet I write in a way
that I believe protects me from those who would seize on any misstep to
disparage me or even to sue for libel. And I've only slightly relaxed the
safeguards I used in my earliest business writing, when I was a stock analyst
subject to SEC regulation.

The keys to safe and ethical writing are:

1\. Don't lie or deliberately mislead. 2\. Be clear about the support for your
stated opinions -- including doubts or lack of support.

Or, equivalently, adhere as best you can to The Golden Rule of Opinionated
Non-Fiction Writing:

Give readers the tools to make informed decisions as to whether they should or
shouldn't accept what you say.

Beyond that, I'd say -- and this is something else that goes back to my
experience a stock analyst:

A. Your job isn't to tell readers what to decide. B. Rather, your job is to
make the best contribution you can to your readers' decision processes.

Ultimately, their decisions are their own responsibility -- and if they forget
that fact, then bad on them.

------
zkhalique
It comes back to what Marshall McLuhan said, "The Medium is the message":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)

I've come to realize is that the expected audience is a crucial aspect of the
communication requirements. On the internet, the audience is quite wide, and
disagreement / outrage usually leads more responses / activity than does
agreement and acceptance. I should say, in fact, that agreement leads to
further sharing, whereas disagreement leads to comments. Thus, an article that
some people agree with and some disagree with, gets re-shared and exposed to a
lot of controversy. That eventually finds its way into other outlets, whereby
each compelling article has a counter-article somewhere else in addition to
all the substance-free vitriolic comments.

What the internet has really done is stop letting us get away with echo
chambers, by breaking the walls between them. I think that is a good thing.

I should write a blog post on that :)

PS: This is not new. I think Bertrand Russell said: "The whole problem with
the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but
wiser people so full of doubts." Now, those doubts are reinforced by the
threat of being shown wrong. I think it's quite an art to articulate
compelling arguments out of factually true statements, and even more of an art
to think several steps ahead, choose which statements to focus on in order to
draw certain reactions from an audience, and thus build receptivity to your
next statements. Daniel Dennett said: You should be able to understand your
opponent's arguments so well that you can say it back and they say "I wish I
had put it that way". And of course, to do that, we shouldn't just write, we
should also read, and all be exposed to the other arguments, instead of the
echo chambers that social networks make money off of:

[https://sealedministries.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/3-reasons-...](https://sealedministries.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/3-reasons-
you-should-read-those-with-whom-you-disagree/)

------
jonathaneunice
As an analyst, I perfected the art of defensive writing. We had to. Everyone
has a vested interest in everything you say. Every way that situations were
described, every opinion of what approaches or technologies will/won't work,
every product rating, every everything. If not a financial vested interest,
then an affinity interest. In the editorial process, we often talked about
"hardening" or "bulletproofing" the writing so it could withstand the slings
and arrows of relentless criticism.

------
madaxe_again
We have conversations like we're bickering over the interpretation of a
specification, and it's every bit as painful sometimes.

As the author says, wilful misinterpretation seems to be the name of the game,
and we almost all seem to be guilty of it from time to time.

It's easy to be a dick when you're not looking someone in the eyes.

------
elliotec
This is why I don't have comments on my own blog. I love discussion and
appreciate it where it belongs, like hacker news and reddit, but if I'm
writing it is my own outlet and I really don't want other people to see what
other people think about what I write. I prefer people come up with their own
opinions. If they want to discuss, they can message me.

------
bluetomcat
The way I see it, defensive writing is also a kind of self-indulgent,
narcissistic behaviour which seeks gratification from always being "correct"
and never being proven "wrong".

It requires a certain dose of humility to admit that something you've said was
wrong or to accept some parts of the opponent's opinion.

~~~
paulpauper
What if you don't know something for certain? Isn't some discretion needed?
Humility is being open the possibility of being wrong.

~~~
bluetomcat
One could say "correct me if I'm wrong" and continue with his thoughts instead
of precluding the possibility for outlining an interesting point of view
because of a small uncertainty.

------
Mendenhall
I think I have come to the conclusion "Don't feed the trolls". His post
reminds me of everyone who would correct grammar mistakes and try to make your
whole point look null because you missed a comma. I am not against correcting
grammar but when you try to paint an idea/person as ignorant because of that I
think it makes the attacker look foolish.

I engage the ones who have actual points to discuss or critique and just
ignore the trolls. I want to engage with educated people anyway to enrich my
own understanding, not bother defending myself from trolls. I figure and
educated reader will see through the troll anyway.

They hate lack of attention and will starve off or be seen by the masses as
annoying. I think the age of the troll is coming to an end. Society or at
least the more educated are starting to see it for what it is.

------
JeremyMorgan
So absolutely true. 2016 needs to be about taking it back a notch. Let's write
how we want to write and say what we want to say and start ignoring the loudly
offended. I'm serious here. Marginalize them instead of giving them power.

And I don't mean important things like racial or gender sensitivity, I just
mean the fringe little things that people pick apart and whine about.

I decided a while back when I write opinion pieces for my blog, you're getting
my opinion. Whine and complain, flame me in the comments, I don't care. You'll
get over it.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
> And I don't mean important things like racial or gender sensitivity, I just
> mean the fringe little things that people pick apart and whine about.

Isn't the common argument that certain aspects of racial or gender sensitivity
are considered "fringe little things that people pick apart and whine about"?
Like mansplaining, manspreading, halloween costumes about other races, the
recent World Fantasy Convention change from HP Lovecraft busts as their
trophies?

EDIT: If I'm actually doing exactly what is being argued against please let me
know. I'm actually just very curious where the "line" is between too-PC and
not-too-PC.

------
6stringmerc
Excellent bit of reflective writing and I'm certainly in agreement. For a
moment I thought this might be the basic gist of an article I'm working up
(re: message boards vs. article/content comments and notions of "community")
but glad to see it's a different angle, and complimentary. Guiding over to
Pinker's article is an immense help as well, because I'm really digging the
term "intellectually unscrupulous" as a nice description of some behaviors
I've seen online that are maddening.

------
ghaff
I'm not sure I buy this argument at all. I've certainly heard the argument
enough times that it's less critical to get everything right on the first pass
on the Web because you can always update it. I'm not a particular fan of this
mindset but it's out there. And I'd note it's the offline pubs that are far
more likely to still have people in a fact checker role--however vestigial.
And making errors of fact too many times was more than frowned upon at
traditional newspapers.

Having said that, a lot depends on the person and the context. I'm sure we
could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in being
controversial than in being correct; some predate online publishing though. On
the other hand, there are some contexts where you don't to state bald opinions
that you can't back up. I'm not convinced any of this has to do with Web or
non-Web.

~~~
squeaky-clean
> I'm sure we could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in
> being controversial than in being correct

I can't name any, so your comment is wrong, and I don't care to respond to the
rest of it, or even acknowledge that I read it. Of course I don't really mean
that, but I feel this is the kind of pedantry the article is talking about,
and not true factual incorrectness.

The Twitter account linked to only has 36.2K followers, not 39K, so that
paragraph is incorrect and stupid. ...Except the important detail here isn't
the exact number of followers, just that there's a large amount. If this were
a scientific paper on the number of followers various humor accounts gain,
then yeah, I would be all for ripping this apart. But it isn't, so it's
irrelevant.

Writing defensively is more than just being factual. It's being overly factual
where it doesn't really matter, because a vocal minority will likely yell at
you otherwise.

~~~
ghaff
A vocal minority will always yell at you. Fuck 'em and ignore 'em.

Edit: I've written in a relatively public sphere, albeit not at politics
level, for long enough to have a pretty thick skin. I realize not everyone is
in that position.

~~~
colmvp
Saying fuck'em and ignore'em is overly simplistic. Some people can do it. Most
can't. Even athletes who earn millions of dollars and have hundreds of
thousands of fans can get riled up by words from a single hater.

At a Social Anxiety meetup, I remember one person who could in great detail
recall a racist incident years back when a random person called the person a
racially derogative word. Sure, he could've just shrugged it off as it was
just a stranger and all. Yet it had a profound effect.

Just as much as words from strangers can inspire us to commit profound change,
so can words do great damage.

------
HelloNurse
Defensive writing is the straightforward consequence of increased exposure to
assholes. While in real life assholes are marginalized, and mainstream
discussions involve only reasonable people, Internet media enable assholes to
masquerade as normal people (they hide behind an ordinary appearance, with
little chance to know they will become irritating), increase their reach (they
can pick on anyone, anywhere and at any time, rather than irritating a limited
circle of acquaintances) and reduce social defenses against them (for
instance, they can easily return with a pseudonym after being banned from a
forum, which in itself is a much milder consequence for antisocial attitudes
than, say, being beaten up or losing their job in real life).

------
decisiveness
I'm unclear on whether the author is yearning to become blase about whether
his ideas are valid, criticizing his own writing, blaming his pandering
statements on imbeciles, or being cleverly ironic.

He laments having to tone down something he thinks might be interpreted
"uncharitably", and in the very next sentence blames it on those who commit
"uncharitable actions".

> At times I’ve been tempted to just turn off comments entirely on my blog,
> and just flat out avoid participating in comment threads on the web

I can relate to internet commenting frustrations, but this conveys real issues
with hearing any dissenting opinion. Turning off comments altogether on your
blog is like fearfully plugging your ears with your fingers to drown out
anything that might be valid criticism.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
It's sort of tangential, but knowing anything I write can be found by Googling
my real name has certainly made me write defensively. It's why my main Twitter
account is not public.

~~~
usrusr
It's why i occasionally send replies to facebook posts via IRC. Technically
quite the opposite of private, but there's a bit of a social convention that
it's OK to be a jerk on IRC and that is not only liberating, but also
surprisingly detrimental to the xkcd:386 pissing contests that are the root of
the defensiveness pchiusano is complaining about.

(disclaimer: IRC is any number of very different places so your experience may
vary - oh, how meta-on-topic! And while we're at it: "on IRC, all talk is
offensive, not defensive, IRC is part of the internet, therefore the whole
post is wrong")

Personally, this whole idea that excessively hedging arguments can be seen as
a bad thing is completely new to me. I do it all the time, from a simple AFAIK
to explicitly stating all the givens that might be attacked, just in case. I
state my opinion, or even just a write a little devil's-advocate "please try
to understand how it looks from that perspective" piece, not a properly
deweaselified wikipedia entry. But i do like to think of my usage as an
enabler for posting bold, speculative ideas. In scientific terms (i'm not a
scientist) i would rather be wrong with an outlandish causality hypothesis
than with misinterpreted correlation noise. Maybe the knowledge that i am a
linguistic offender will help me making the use of defensiveness more
deliberate and to the point.

------
intopieces
Since integrating shutup.css [0] in my browsers, my experience on websites
with comments sections has been much more pleasurable. It's very good at
recognizing comments sections and completely removing them.

I wish more sites disabled them and instead opened their blogs up to well-
thought out letters to the editor.

[0][https://stevenf.com/shutupcss/](https://stevenf.com/shutupcss/)

------
strictnein
In regards to hedges and weasel words: I never used more weasel words and
hedges than when I sold computers at Circuit City. I knew what the policies
should be and how we should be able to help customers, but I had no power to
actually make that happen so I used tons of should, may, probably, likely,
etc.

I hated it and it took me a while to unlearn that way of talking.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I use a lot of what are called weasel words because the reality is that they
are the most accurate words. For example, someone buying a lottery ticket will
probably lose. I have trouble saying they definitely will because I know there
is a slim chance they will win. And if 1 in a 100,000,000+ is enough to make
me avoid saying definitely, imagine what chances such as 1 in a 1,000 or 1 in
a 100 do to my word choice.

------
beat
The internet has made offensive writers of many.

------
trhway
on the other side, that guaranteed exposure to unexpected and harshest
criticism is a great beauty of the Internet (it is like street fight with no
rules vs. strictly regulated fights under rules of some league) - if you're
not afraid (which is easily achieved by for example staying anonymous :) you
may explore many ideas much more boldly, deeply and widely and be able to hear
arguments and criticism of them not available otherwise elsewhere. As a
result, Internet taught me that i may be sometimes [fortunately very
infrequently] not right and/or just plainly mistaken. That was a huge personal
discovery :) , a bit painful, yet it is percolated even into offline life -
whenever i hear some crap at the meeting, etc. i now sometimes give myself a
second or even 2 to entertain the very improbable idea that that crap may be
worth something what i just don't see right at the moment :)

------
anotheryou
Programmers do, because you are exposed to ambiguous, badly written
specifications for features all the time.

------
dustingetz
This is a startup opportunity and can be solved through UX and richer
moderation tools. UX influences user behavior. One small example, a richer
moderation system that captures _-1 because violation of HN guideline #6
"avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely
new to say about them_ could short circuit entire flamewar threads. I think a
psychologist could probably build the right UX to get top 1% expertise to
generate incredible discussions reliably and funnel the 99% peanut gallery off
to the side where they can happily contribute too. I would have liked to see
reddit build this but they have had years and years to do something
interesting, i guess they are too big to innovate now

~~~
jonahx
good rules and UI can help, but good UI won't change the way people are, and
for any given set of rules, people motivated by strong emotions will find
creative ways to break the rules to get their needs satisfied.

the only 100% reliable solution is to completely remove their freedom of
expression (eg, with an all-powerful moderator, whose interpretation of the
rules is law).

------
Lanari
I notice this the most on tech people, I think it's related that we read a lot
of stories about people getting fired for a tweet or a post...

------
kiba
I dunno, man. I write defensively as a default and consequentially nitpick
every argument made for a position.

On the other hand, I am not adverse to changing my mind on a flip of a good
argument.

If I get offended or defensive, it means that my beliefs aren't as ironclad as
I thought.

There are some areas that I pretty much don't pay attention though.

Anything concerning creationism, global warming denialism, pro-smoking, god,
etc.

I won't waste my time entertaining obviously wrong arguments.

~~~
krisdol
The article's message is that non-defensive writing traditionally presumed the
author's openness to (in your case) changing their mind, and that today we
have all become defensive writers because there is now an expectation that
someone will use nitpicks about inconsequential points to discredit the entire
piece.

~~~
itp
> today we have all become defensive writers because there is now an
> expectation that someone will use nitpicks about inconsequential points to
> discredit the entire piece.

Even such inconsequential things as, for example, pointing out the parent's
incorrect choice of "adverse" instead of "averse," which has no bearing on the
argument.

There's almost always a mistake, overgeneralization, or convenient shortcut in
anything a person says. Holding people to an impossible standard just adds
stress all around.

------
amelius
There should be a tool to which you could say: here's an idea, please rewrite
it into defensive form.

------
paulpauper
Another possibility is that the writer doesn't actually know if something is
certain or not.

------
Mz
So, about a week ago, I wrote a piece that I feel has a solid point and I
posted it on Hacker News. It hit 39 karma and had 54 comments. Not impressive
for Hacker News overall, but, hey, decent for my own personal blog's track
record.

The top voted comment on it is incredibly dismissive, completely dismissing my
6-ish years of college, more than 5 years working in insurance, etc. over one
detail that wasn't thoroughly researched and was, in fact, framed to admit
that it was kind of hand-wavy. I don't think what I said was entirely wrong
and stupid, but it wasn't 100% accurate.

(HN item in question:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819091))

But I think I have two choices here:

I can be completely bummed that one person chose to completely dismiss
everything based on one not perfect remark in the piece and others upvoted
that. Or I can value the upvotes the item got, the amount of meaningful
discussion it did generate, the page views it got, and the constructive
feedback that tells me that if I want to write more on this topic, I need to
do a bit more research and firm up my ability to defend my points or random
asshats are going to say "Well, based on one single detail, nothing she says
can possibly have any merit."

But, hey, I have done similar things myself:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828054)
So, maybe people doing that isn't all asshattery. Maybe it is more complicated
than that and when someone tells you "x detail makes me not
read/believe/whatever any of it", then that is constructive feedback that you
can choose to try to learn something from so you can improve your writing --
or not, as you see fit.

I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to express myself
effectively online. I think part of the challenge is that a) your audience is
incredibly diverse, so lazy writing habits that are rife with unquestioned
assumptions which may be racist, sexist, etc are going to get called out
online even though your personal circle of friends wouldn't have a problem
with it (because they are also kind of racist, sexist, whatever) and b) you
are talking to people who may know more than you about some piece of it and/or
can google up info, either to fact check or just to rebut because they don't
like you, don't agree with your point, just got dumped, are IUI (Internetting
Under The Influence) or for any damn reason.

So, in addition to readers perhaps needing to try to "find the insight, not
the error," authors can also try to focus more on the metrics that make them
feel positive about having written it rather than focusing on the comments
that make them cringe.

It took some self control at first, but I am finding that my experience of the
Internet is much better now that I focus more on counting the positives and,
as much as possible, ignoring the negatives. It does involve some judgment
calls. You can't just turn the other cheek on everything. There are situations
where you need to correct people or clarify your meaning or defend your
statement. But if you are getting traffic and getting comments, even if some
of them are ugly, then you accomplished something.

I am trying harder to decide what I want to accomplish, keeping my eye on
evidence that I am moving that goal forward, and not expecting some "perfect"
experience (for lack of a better way of saying that, as I have other things to
do and this comment has gone on long enough).

~~~
flubert
Is there a way to use comments as an editorial device? A wiki-like solution,
combined with a MS-Word Track-changes features, where you can make changes,
and leave comments and it all shows up on the same page? Like with the health
care article example, the first 90% of that seems like pure fluff (when it
isn't making a false or misleading or questionable statements), essentially
padding added to a high-school report to meet an arbitrary length requirement.
The real meat and the potentially interesting content is then almost lost in
the shuffle. A professional editor would request a complete rewrite. You
should be telling us more about DPC, which is new, interesting, and
potentially very valuable.

~~~
Mz
I have no idea if there is a way to use comments as an editorial device.

Why do you think 90% seems like fluff? Based on comments on Metafilter where
all I did was talk about DPC, I felt the background info was necessary.

But I do hope to write a more professional version and I am in talks with a
publication that may take it. So I am keenly interested in feedback.

Thanks!

~~~
flubert
Here's a version that I commented on in Libre/Open Office (an *.odt file), but
I assume you could probably open it in a modern version of MS-Office, and have
the comments come through fine):

[http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=62873318985673539567](http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=62873318985673539567)

------
mwfunk
I'm seeing way, way, waaaaaay too many commenters here who apparently came
away from this thinking that "defensive writing", as described by the author,
has anything to do with not offending people. That's totally orthogonal to
what the author is talking about. He's talking about the tendency some people
have to take everything as literally as possible, finding some logical hole in
an argument based on a very literal (and often wrong) interpretation, and then
start stupid inflammatory debates in comment threads about it. As far as I can
tell it has nothing to do with political correctness, although people saying
so really deliciously proves his point.

The root of it is sometimes that an author didn't express something very well.
In general though, it's because some readers are predisposed to find the most
literal and uncharitable interpretation of something they read, which they
then use as an excuse to try to show up the author in the comments. These
types of commenters are the types of people who don't assume good faith on the
part of other people, and when they see something that doesn't make sense to
them their first thought is that the person who wrote it is an idiot, rather
than to step back and take a moment to think about what the author might've
meant. These types of commenters are looking for excuses to publicly disagree
with someone, they're not trying to participate in an exploratory discussion
in which the participants don't automatically assume the worst about each
other.

For example, what if someone made an offhand comment about C being the de
facto standard for systems programming for the last few decades? On certain
forums, it is pretty much guaranteed that someone will chime in about all of
the various kernels, research OSes, etc. that have been and are currently
being written in languages other than C, and proceed to argue with the poster
about this fact. Of course, they're right in a sense- it's true that C
accounts for < 100.000% of systems programming. But it's pointless to argue
about as it's based on a strawman from an overly literal interpretation of the
original statement.

And it pretty much goes downhill from there. Overly Literal Internet Guy #2
then has to chime in and attack Overly Literal Internet Guy #1 over some other
strawman based on an uncharitable interpretation of what #1 wrote.

Point being, the entire discussion gets derailed by a handful of people who
refuse to give each other the benefit of the doubt and just really want to
argue. We could have been talking about why C is such a juggernaut in the
systems programming world, or what other languages might make sense for
systems programming, or any number of other interesting digressions. But
noooooo, we can't have nice things because a few people just want to scream at
the author and each other about willful, overly literal misinterpretations of
what was written. As a result, many writers will warp their style to put
hedges and defensive qualifiers around every single statement to avoid all
discussion getting derailed by Overly-Literal-Internet-Guys-Who-Think-
Everyone-Is-Else-Is-An-Idiot. By the time all of those qualifiers and hedges
go in, it's possible that the point of the original statement is diluted or
lost entirely.

And of course, in what I've just written, I myself am no doubt guilty of
assuming bad faith on the part of other people and am just as guilty of the
behavior I'm complaining about. I get it, I really do. This is a type of
cognitive bias that everyone has, including myself. There are no easy answers
when it comes to understanding human interactions or our own mental processes,
we can only try our best. I only take issue with people who think they are
infallible and don't even try to play devil's advocate with themselves when
thinking about things they care about.

~~~
chipsy
There's a trick one can pull if you decide to engage with literal thinkers
head-on, and that is to give them bait by inserting a "great error" somewhere
in the text, for example:

> ...this method is justified, because we know the earth is flat.

This is one of the core techniques in esoteric writing. What the great error
does is intentionally push the dynamic of the conversation away from
agreeability on the surface towards "picking apart and puzzling". People who
aren't inclined to think about things will miss the great error entirely and
go on without feeling the need to remark(since the essay's surface will
usually be framed towards an audience's status quo), but once the error is
discovered, the rest suddenly falls into doubt, and then literal thinkers are
suddenly confronted with an essay that is far more challenging, because your
error was not just an error, but a trap to force them to think about the other
statements carefully in order to "prove you more wrong". It is their thinking,
and not yours, that becomes warped. To pull this off the essay has to hold a
tension between truth and falsity where some statements hold true even under
inspection, while others don't.

This also makes the resulting comment threads much more lively since they will
consist of smart people falling over themselves to show how wrong and stupid
you are, only to find their minds are changed by the end.

------
leppr
Not me.

(please no downvote)

~~~
vlunkr
I assume this is a joke that people aren't getting?

~~~
leppr
Well, low effort one liners are frowned upon for good reasons so I don't mind
the downvotes but I couldn't resist. I just wish the same treatment was also
applied to non-joke useless comments. _" I too have a baby and I love him"_,
ok great.

