AlanCrowe comments on Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People - Less Wrong

86 Post author: lionhearted 01 December 2010 08:25AM

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Comment author: AlanCrowe 03 December 2010 02:49:38PM 4 points [-]

Intellectual authors crave audience engagement. A lack of examples is usually the result of the author being uncertain where they are required. Bulking up the text with unnecessary examples makes it worse and is work, so the natural tendency is to put in too few examples.

The author is really hoping for comments such as

When you say "a means of transport", does that include a bicycle. It strikes me that a bicycle would be too slow. Some examples would make your article suck less.

or perhaps

When you say a "means of transport", does that include a bicycle. It strikes me that a bicycle would be too slow. Some examples would perfect your already brilliant article.

Either of these would be much more welcome than any response that asked non-specifically for more examples, no matter how generically flattering. The author already knows that he didn't put in enough examples. The information he is lacking is clues as to where his readers are getting lost through a lack of examples. That would let the author add the right examples. More important, evidence of the audience's intellectual engagement would make the author happy.