orthonormal comments on Eight Short Studies On Excuses - Less Wrong

210 Post author: Yvain 20 April 2010 11:01PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 30 September 2010 11:58:05PM 0 points [-]

So, while I appreciate your concern with communication, and don't want to discourage you from further pursuing your efforts in that area, I am obliged to point out that your comment -- like those of many others -- didn't communicate anything to me other than resistance to my strength of feeling.

Now that I think about it, the real point I should have made is that getting noticeably angry on the Internet about language usage is sort of low-status (only the first level above using poor spelling and grammar); the second level is to let such things pass, and the third is to remark wittily on bad usage (or only remark openly on it when it has bad externalities).

My original response, in retrospect, was clearly meant to signal second-level sophistication. This one is, perhaps, attempting the fourth level (going meta on questions of language usage).