abigailgem comments on Religion, Mystery, and Warm, Soft Fuzzies - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Psychohistorian 14 May 2009 11:41PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (112)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: abigailgem 15 May 2009 01:41:52PM 4 points [-]

I am irritated to find my post named as "nitpicking" when I was answering a direct question. I too "got the meaning and moved on". Alvarojabril below, much clearer- "The glance of a lover will still be alluring". Why not go with that?

Comment author: scotherns 15 May 2009 01:56:32PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, the rather harsh 'nitpicking' should really have been addressed to the top comment in the chain that started this line of discussion. I placed it as a comment after your contribution because I wanted to point out that even your attempts to give a more generic and widely applicable example will be doomed to failure, because you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.

Comment author: Emily 15 May 2009 05:51:40PM *  4 points [-]

I'm sorry about that -- I'm aware that it does seem like nitpicking, and if it were just an isolated thing then it certainly would be irrelevant nitpicking. But when it's a common occurrence that I believe really does have a negative impact, I don't see it that way.

I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don't think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.

Comment author: MrHen 15 May 2009 06:08:21PM *  0 points [-]

I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don't think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.

The outcome of this surely seems likely to swing behavior closer to what you would like to see. It seems that the comment was a success. I wouldn't feel guilty about it at all.

Comment author: MichaelBishop 15 May 2009 02:48:39PM 2 points [-]

you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.

Yes, but we should keep these assumptions to a minimum, especially when: a) they might negatively affect some people's experience of LW. b) it is fairly easy to make it more universal.