Exetera comments on Cleaning up the "Worst Argument" essay - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Yvain 06 September 2012 12:09AM

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Comment author: Exetera 07 September 2012 01:55:52AM *  4 points [-]

I'm not really loving the way you're inventing two Title-Cased Important Concepts in this version of the essay; you're title-casing both "The Worst Argument In The World" and "Guilt by Association." In general, I don't love the "filled with buzzwords" feel, and you definitely don't need the redundancy, but there are also some specific reasons why "Guilt by Association" is a poorer choice to title-case.

I could swallow title-casing just "The Worst Argument In The World" in the first version of the essay, as it's not a phrase I had heard much before and the casing helps to signify that it's being used to refer to a specific bad argument rather than an abstract worst argument. In this version, you're using "Guilt by Association" as the name, which doesn't seem to be pointing to an abstract argument and therefore doesn't need the title case; furthermore, "guilt by association" is already a widely-used name for a slightly different fallacy, and it's a bit confusing to see it used to mean something different here.