tut comments on Common Errors in History - Less Wrong

4 Post author: PhilGoetz 09 February 2010 07:27PM

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Comment author: tut 09 February 2010 08:45:34PM * 0 points [-]

He is giving his own summary/interpretation of the pamphlet. The things in the article are the takeway points that Phil came up with after reading "Common Errors in History". If you don't know what that is, please reread the first paragraph of the post.

Comment author: mattnewport 09 February 2010 09:03:50PM * 2 points [-]

I would have liked to see a link to the original mention/recommendation, or at least a little more context for the recommendation. "I bought a copy of Common Errors in History, which someone mentioned recently on LW." is not a very effective opening sentence for getting me to care about the ensuing post.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 09 February 2010 09:31:16PM 0 points [-]

I couldn't find the original mention. It was in a discussion about Christopher Columbus and the common error of believing that people of his time believed the world was flat.

Comment author: mattnewport 09 February 2010 09:42:18PM 1 point [-]

I'm inclined to think that if Google can't turn up the discussion using some searching for 'Columbus' or 'Common Errors in History' (as I've verified it does not appear to) then you may be mis-remembering the original source of the mention.

Comment author: SilasBarta comment score below threshold [+] (14 children)

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 09 February 2010 09:46:59PM 8 points [-]

You're hoping this "red" thing catches on, I presume? Because it's not otherwise saving anybody effort.

Comment author: mattnewport 09 February 2010 10:01:29PM * 8 points [-]

It actually costs effort for me, it interrupts my reading flow when I see an obvious spelling or grammatical error.

The theory that the read/read confusion is a major problem is based on an overly simplistic model of the way people read as well. Experiments have shown that people are capable of interpreting words based on contextual cues from later in the sentence - the brain is receiving visual information from words that come positionally later and uses it to resolve ambiguities while parsing text.

Comment author: SilasBarta 09 February 2010 10:33:38PM * -1 points [-]

The theory that the read/read confusion is a major problem is based on an overly simplistic model of the way people read as well.

To add to what I said above, I know that it works for me, because when re-reading a post, I always find myself having to check back if there isn't much context. So I'm not sure I'm making a mistake about how people read, just reporting what goes on when I myself read.

Comment author: mattnewport 09 February 2010 10:47:03PM 4 points [-]

The mistake is assuming that because it works for you it will work for others.

I think I'm unusually disrupted by spelling/grammatical errors. I find it extremely hard to read the occasional posts here that use e/em/eir or other gender neutral pronouns instead of he/him/his for example but I assume this is unusual as I haven't seen anyone else mention it. I find it sufficiently distracting that I will usually give up reading a post that does that.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 April 2011 05:18:01PM 1 point [-]

I had no idea what was going on with e/em/eir. I have never seen them used anywhere else and thought there was some kind of inside joke on lesswrong, something like a play on the word atheist as a'th'ist, as in someone who doesn't believe in the letter combination 'th', or maybe a bad HTML parser trying to insert a th tag, because they seem to be used where the/them/their would be used. It was bugging me enough that I searched for [space]eir[space] and your comment was the first result to directly address it.

Comment author: Barry_Cotter 04 April 2011 05:50:06PM 0 points [-]

Spivak Pronouns if you have not yet been enlightened.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 April 2011 08:39:53PM 0 points [-]

I get how it works now, anks.

Comment author: SilasBarta comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: SilasBarta 09 February 2010 10:32:20PM -2 points [-]

Sorry, didn't realize I was unique in this regard. Obviously, I can infer the meaning from context too, but sometimes -- like at the beginning of the sentence, it takes a second to adjust. And sometimes context can't even disambiguate.

In contrast, if you see "red", you immediately think of the sound of the word "red", which jumps you straight into thinking of past tense. (Again, for me at least.) That's why every other verb like this works the same way (lead-led, breed-bred, etc.).

Comment author: bgrah449 10 February 2010 12:47:58AM 0 points [-]

How about "readed"?

Comment author: Bo102010 10 February 2010 01:00:10AM 0 points [-]

How about "have read"?

Comment author: bgrah449 10 February 2010 01:03:37AM 1 point [-]

"Have read" is already a separate grammatical tense.

Comment author: SilasBarta 10 February 2010 02:10:33AM 0 points [-]

How about "did read", which is the same tense, but with excessive emphasis on the act?

Comment author: bgrah449 10 February 2010 03:08:58AM 0 points [-]

You're the judge here; you tell me! Although FWIW, I don't see the point of merely reshuffling the ambiguity to a phrase or variation in emphasis that already exists.

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