ccarterlandis

5 anni fadiscuss

I wish I could have made this comment. I wanted to make the same points, but my reply to this comment was much angrier and accusatory, and was not nearly as civilized or mature as yours. I will try to emulate this style of rebuttal in the future, and to be a little nicer when I can, even when I'm angry. Your username definitely fits!!

ccarterlandis

5 anni fadiscuss

Just found out "Lorien" is also from LoTR, so I now see your point. I was far too hasty in my original comment and didn't do the proper due diligence to understand what I was talking about. While I still don't feel the names matter, I do now definitely understand why some people feel that they do matter. My apologies.

ccarterlandis

5 anni fadiscuss

When I made my comment above, I didn't know Valinor was from LoTR, and I do see now why that would be kind of weird to some people. That part of comment was overly aggressive, and I should have done more research into the community and the name before I made my comment. My apologies for my tone, and for not doing my part to be informed.

However, personally, I still don't think it makes sense as an argument, for a few reasons. For one, I doubt he came up with that name - hell, unless I missed something, I don't even know if Scott actually likes LoTR. In most cases, the name of the housing community would not even be a consideration I would make when determining to live there, as the cost/amenities/location are far more important, so even if he is a LoTR fan, I highly doubt that the name was a factor in why he lives there. Maybe Scott's priorities for housing differ, but I've not seen anything that would indicate that.

EDIT: Not sure how to do a strikethrough on HN, but I just found out "Lorien" is also from LoTR, so I think it's safe to assume that Scott is a LoTR fan in some regard, and did probably have a hand in naming the housing community, and that my assumptions in the above paragraph are incorrect. I don't want to delete them, for context, so I'll just leave this edit here. However, I still don't think that matters; what matters (to me) is his professional competence.

Second, it doesn't matter to me where my psychiatrist lives. They're a psychiatrist, not a real estate agent. I also don't think my psychiatrist liking LoTR would a bad thing. All I care about is that they do their job well, and while I understand your concerns about it being a "hipster" housing community and the possibility of it signaling my psychiatrist's values, extrapolating their professional performance from their housing choice seems like a bit of a stretch in this case.

ccarterlandis

5 anni fadiscuss

How is "rationalist" pathetic? What's it's revealing of? In what ways does it signal that he's right? Did you even read why he uses that term? [0]

> the type of person who surrounds themselves with other hardcore Tolkien fans and makes subtle Tolkien references in everyday life don't tend to be what you'd call the most well-adjusted people

Yeah, God forbid I surround myself with people who really enjoy similar things as me and like to make references to pop culture. That would just be so unbearable! You must be a lot of fun at Comic-Con. I don't think most people would agree with you here, and it just makes you sound absolutely insufferable to be around.

> I just realized both the previous and the new name of his blog is an anagram of his name. Again, this sends a certain signal

I want to believe so badly that you're trolling here. I don't understand how or why using an anagram of your name sends any sort of "signal", it's just a fun way to come up with a name that means nothing. This might be one of the biggest reaches for something to be angry about that I've seen in a long time.

[0]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wonderi...

EDIT: fixed a typo

ccarterlandis

5 anni fadiscuss

> psuedo-intellectuals

This is so deliciously ironic.

> runs a psychiatry called "Lorien", lives in a group-housing-community called "Valinor"

Um...okay? What's your point? That those are funny names? No one gives a damn what they're called, and I fail to see what the problem is with running a psychiatry or living in a housing community. Do you also hate on ophthalmologists that run their own firms and college students living in community dorms too? Or what about all those monks and nuns that live in group housing and also practice medicine? Nothing about either of those things implies any amount of instability, or lack of adjustment.

> are his opinions on all the countless fields and topics he writes about (in implied expert capacity) worth listening to?

I don't think anyone is arguing that Scott is necessarily an expert of many of the subjects he covers, least of all himself. I think he's made it abundantly clear over the years that this is a side gig for him that he does for fun, and do broaden his understanding of the world. Even if he isn't an "expert", that doesn't mean he can't still do research and blog about it. Do you think that no one should ever talk or write about anything that they are not a world-class expert in? Cause that sounds really, really boring, and also basically impossible. From the first post on his new blog[0]:

> And finally, the highlight of my last blog was its loyal and active readership, who constantly corrected my errors, resolved my lingering questions, and inspired most of "my" best ideas.

To me, this doesn't sound like something a world-class expert would be saying. But hey, I'm not an expert on experts, so my opinion is invalid, right?

It's not my intent to convince you to like him, but I think you are exactly the type of person Scott had in mind when he wrote his first ever SSC post about emphasizing charity over absurdity[1]. It's okay if you don't like Scott's writing, and it's okay if you don't think he's worth listening to, but I just hope you slow down and try to genuinely understand why people might like his writing, and focus on those reasons for your argument instead of leaving an inflammatory comment making only very surface-level arguments. I would very much like to practice charity as well and genuinely understand why you don't like his writing, but when your argument boils down to "he's a neckbeard blogger who has opinions about many things", you're not giving me much to work with.

[0]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wonderi... [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/youre-probably-wonderi...

ccarterlandis

6 anni fadiscuss

> this [this fast and loose style] interrupts more productive work and deters deep thinking

This doesn't mesh with how I feel toward Slack. Slack itself is the thing that's disrupting my productivity and deterring deeper thinking by pinging me all the time. When I open Slack, the vast majority of the time, I'm looking to express my point as clearly AND concisely as possible so I can get back to doing whatever it was, which is 99% of time more important. As a result I use (or don't use) grammatical conventions, capitalization, and emoji depending on the context of my message and what will allow me to get my entire message across the fastest, and hopefully correctly.

If I'm messaging the person I've pairing with all day, or if I'm coordinating with my team about who will pick up a story, I'm much less likely to give my message all the proper formatting. These people what I'm like and how I tend to communicate, and so I can rely on that prior knowledge to "cut corners" here and there. I'm also much, much more likely to use emoji because I can communicate my intentions and my "intonation" nearly instantly, without having to sit there and worry about wordsmithing my whole message.

That being said, if I'm message in a large public channel that perhaps has multiple teams or belongs to a team I don't normally interact with, I'll spend much more time wordsmithing and editing to make sure I'm following proper conventions - mostly for the sake of clarity.

It does make some very salient points (think about how others could misinterpret your message, expand acronyms/use them sparingly, write to your audience, etc.) but I think they bought a little bit too much into the "Slack has replaced email" argument. For me, the main benefit of Slack over email is the lowered barrier to entry to starting a conversation and the ability to keeping it flowing, and part of achieving that is being okay with lowering the standards of communication.

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