Comment by xpe
Comment by xpe 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by xpe 3 days ago
[flagged]
It didn’t take me long to parse out the meaning but the phrasing was confusing.
“The next book he wrote, Noise, ….” Would have been better or “After that book he wrote Noise….”.
I absolutely was confused for a second or two and thought “wait, are we talking about a different person? He isn’t going to have a ‘next’ book unless he had one queued up?”.
Did I need the explanation above? Not really, I’d come to the right conclusion on my own but I can imagine someone who isn’t a native speaker (reader?) might stumble on that more and I enjoyed the confirmation.
> Probably nobody at all got confused by that word choice.
This is overconfidence; e.g. it "it is clear to me, so it must have been clear to everyone else."
Indeed, there is a person in this overall thread [1] saying the use of "next" was ambiguous:
> I literally thought some unpublished book.
Ok, fine, probably someone will get confused about anything.
It was made clear to everyone because of the word choice in context. If someone didn't get it then they didn't put two and two together.
I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries and the top entry aligns more with "subsequent" in every one.
You are wrong on this.
You seem quite interested in right versus wrong. I wonder if you will be intellectually honest if/when I reveal errors, mistakes, oversimplifications, and so on?
> I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries and the top entry aligns more with "subsequent" in every one.
Even if you had looked at every dictionary, would you claim such a process resolves ambiguity in general? I hope not.
As you know, there are other entries other than the first in a dictionary. Multiple entries means there are multiple usages: there can be ambiguity. Sometimes usage diminishes or eliminates ambiguity, but not always.
> I looked up the word in a few different dictionaries...
You only took a small sample. How can you offer this as definitive evidence? You can't.
In case you didn't check it or overlooked it, here is the first entry from the Apple Dictionary:
> 1 (of a time or season) coming immediately after the time of writing or speaking: we'll go next year | next week's parade.
Anyhow, my argument does not rely on pointing to a dictionary and saying "I'm right" and "you are wrong". I am saying:
1. Reasonable people see ambiguity (in this specific case and in general)
2. No one person is the arbiter of what is ambiguous for others.
3. Claiming there is a definitive process to resolve ambiguity for everyone is naive.
The sheer irony of your unwarranted pedantic critique of the usage of “next” is that all HN threaded comments, including yours, have a “next” link in their headers which clearly does NOT refer to unwritten future comments.
Not sure why I bothered responding to a troll.
I'm reasonably sure this is not what happened, judging by my own recollection of when I have been tempted to write similar things, and my discussions with people who have written similar things. However, your story is both simple and coherent.
It's much easier to point out others' alleged irrational thinking, but the main purpose of books like this is to help you better understand your own thinking.
> It's much easier to point out others' alleged irrational thinking, but the main purpose of books like this is to help you better understand your own thinking.
That sounds right. I only can make probabilistic guesses as to what is happening in someone else's brain. By posing a question to someone else, there is some chance that person may ask it of themselves. If not today, then perhaps in future.
Would you please stop perpetuating flamewars and taking HN threads on generic tangents? You've been doing this a ton lately, it's not what this site is for, and the effects your posts have been having on the threads is regrettable.
Also, please stop crossing into name-calling and personal attack, as you did here. jeffwass shouldn't have referred to you as "a troll" but there's no question that your posts have been having trollish effects in the threads, and this is actually what matters (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Here are another couple of recent examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45522090, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45522043. We need you to stop posting like this.
Hello. I've taken some time to think about this. I appreciate your explanation, I care about HN, and I'm open to feedback.
> Also, please stop crossing into name-calling and personal attack, as you did here.
I see many of my comments were unkind and unnecessary. I'm sorry, and I will stop. Here are three examples in this thread of where I went wrong, in my own words:
- I was accusatory, mean, and condescending when I wrote "I wonder if you will be intellectually honest if/when I reveal errors, mistakes, oversimplifications, and so on?"
- I did some psychoanalysis (which is unwarranted), such as when I wrote "You are clearly upset and bothered and resorting to rationalization and attacks."
- I accused someone of bad faith when I wrote: "You exaggerated and trivialized. You deflected and moved the goalposts. These are signs you want to win more than discuss in good faith."
I will keep these course corrections in mind.
P.S. I know this isn't a full reply to your comment; I am still processing some parts.
I'll answer in various frames:
- product development: why make someone "do one extra click" when you can make the extra click unnecessary?
- writing: respect your audience's time.
- humility: take one minute of your time to save other's time.
- databases: optimize for reading not writing
I'm sorry to pile on, since I just replied to you at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45560985, but this is such a bad case that I think two replies are warranted.
You started and perpetuated a completely unnecessary flamewar here, and of all the offtopic things to do that about, someone's use of the word "next" is particularly superfluous.
An isolated comment of that sort is forgivable, but perpetuating the flamewar and crossing into personal attack, as you did below, is not. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html