SoullessAutomaton comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 July 2009 07:22AM

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Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 25 July 2009 12:06:26AM 6 points [-]

It's not about the amount of effort it takes, it's about this whole mentality that when a certain turn of phrase or writing style risks 'offending' or 'scaring off' a person, the one who has to give way is always the writer, never the reader. In other words, it's assumed that the responsibility lies with the writer to change his wording, rather than with the reader to see past the offending words to the meaning behind them.

Behold, the internet. It's full of people, and most of them have something to say. In a market of attention where people decide "should I bother to read this", the power is purely on the buyer's side. In other words, if you want to be taken seriously as a writer it's your responsibility to communicate effectively.

As a group, we all share an interest in keeping the quality of communication on Less Wrong high.

Comment author: Furcas 25 July 2009 12:52:53AM 2 points [-]

There's a difference between communicating effectively and catering to hypersensitive nuts.