Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles.
Which is fair, your preferences are yours, but I much prefer single expansive essays like this that give the author room to develop large complex idea structures, and to reach out from the central idea to disparate but interestingly relevant related themes. This might not (or might) be the majority preference, but Scott (and the 'Wait but Why' guy, among others) has built up large enough audiences from this type of musings, and mostly good quality audience too, so it's working for him.
Your second paragraph is diplomatic and even-handed. I can get behind it.
Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. Of course the OP was expressing their opinion. They weren't making a statement of fact. What good comes from "correcting" them? It just makes you look bad.
I think the phrase "it’d be much better as five much smaller articles" can be interpreted in two ways:
1) "I would prefer ..."
2) "It would be better ..."
You can be in the habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, that when they say "A is a better coffee than B" they are merely expressing an opinion, because you think it's too tedious to say "For my taste" before each opinion.
But I hope you see how the phrase literally is "It would be better" as if there is an (obvious implicit) standard by which we can all agree to judge things, and from that standard, "it would be better if".
For what it's worth, I was avoiding the "FTFY" format which always sounds aggressive and rubs me the wrong way, so I chose this as the milder option. I can see it being impolite by the standard that (I hope) HN comments should aspire to, so I'll use something even milder next time. Thanks.
Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..."
In general, I think it makes sense to avoid implying that the other person is wrong when you've decided to try addressing in a strict logical way something that was uttered as conversational English.
peteretep:
> This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles
sundarurfriend:
> Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles.
dllthomas:
> Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..."
You seem to have struck a loop, you are asking that the correction "Correction: That should say it's your opinion" should be "In my opinion, you should say it's your opinion".
Your issue is that they claimed objectivity when they called the poster subjective, which seems like an endless rabbithole to go down, since it is only your subjective opinion that they should do so.
You present my comment as criticism, but you left out important context. I did not respond directly to "Correction:" but to a comment by sundarurfriend that seemed to be acknowledging that "correction" did not play the desired conversational role, even as it represented an attempt to be less confrontational than "FTFY". My comment was friendly suggestion of alternatives, along with some measure of analysis as to what went wrong.
The issue I was pointing to was not subjectivity vs objectivity at all. I was pointing out that the way language is used often doesn't square up neatly to a narrow semantic analysis, and that acknowledging the intent of the communication even when you are moving to a more explicit, semantically-oriented regime might help sundarurfriend achieve more of the kind of conversational outcomes that I understand them to prefer.
If you want to make unambiguous statements of opinion, don't use language that implies statements of facts. See also: E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
> This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles
I can't understand how one could read this as an implication of fact. The phrase "great article" is a qualitative assessment. So is "better".
It wasn't necessary for the parent to "correct" the poster for not qualifying that their comment as opinion. It's clear the comment is opinion on its face.
"Correcting" the poster for not couching their comment in some kind of explicit language that qualifies it as an opinion seems needless at best, and pedantic, rude, and patronizing at worst.
I absolutely hate that I'm so fixated on this, but I can't let it go.
The "correction" in the prior post struck me as impolite, pedantic, and uncivil. It didn't read as "jokey" to me.
Arguably, my posts don't add anything too. I guess I'm just tired of having to adopt such a "highly defensive" writing style for HN comments. It irked me to see somebody seemingly pedantically jumping on a poster who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion. That's what I took it for.
> ...who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion.
You are giving OP the benefit of the doubt, which is a nice thing to do, but what if it isn't actually true? One isolated case is no big deal of course, but what if this (people accidentally mistaking opinions for facts) was actually a very common phenomenon? And when combined with the power of the internet to propagate ideas (opinions perceived as facts), brought about a scenario where people's beliefs about reality are highly divergent from actual reality...in a complex system, might this possibly result in a kind of self-reinforcing negative feedback loop?
If one looked carefully, I wonder if some signs of this phenomenon could be identified within the system we find ourselves living in.
