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A comment on What I Didn't Say. Parent comment

Re:What I Didn't Say by coldtea on Monday December 30, 2013 @08:25PM (#6988340)
>It's "amateur social science" in the sense that it's an "off-hand comment". I could write a 5k word essay on this very small point and make it respectable

Pics or it didn't happen.

>I didnt because HN comment boxes are not vehicles of long essays. (...) Far too much effort to spend on a crowd whose faith in pg's intellectual status is based on his money-making ability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtracking

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What I Didn't Say by coldtea on Monday December 30, 2013 @08:48PM (#6988426)
>It isnt back tracking when at the time you made the comment you said it was an off-hand comment.

So, it isn't backtracking if you pre-emptively declare that you are backtracking. Right.

>It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.

Unfortunately the similarity doesn't hold, because Jon Stewart doesn't also say "I can do a much better news program than them", whereas you did said that you could write a respectable "5k word essay on this very small point" (and then didn't).

>Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience

As if the section of website where something is published matters one iota. It's not like having an essays section necessitates that you only put George Steiner quality material in it. Heck, Zed Shaw has an essays section on his website.

Also, you keep mentioning this conference audience a lot -- Sounds like sour grapes to me.

As if Defcon is some elite philosophical conference, and Paul Graham failed to keep to the level of previous speakers, like Plato or Heidegger.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What I Didn't Say by mjburgess on Monday December 30, 2013 @09:27PM (#6988573)
I'm reacting to how he is treated and how he writes (playing up to this image of himself as a Heidegger). If we attribute his writing to a small time blogger who's writing on a few topics for fun then all of my critique looks insanely harsh.

You have to put what im saying in the context of how his work is read (as some kind of obviously briliant religious text).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What I Didn't Say by mjburgess on Monday December 30, 2013 @08:38PM (#6988390)
It isnt back tracking when at the time you made the comment you said it was an off-hand comment.

It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.

Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience.

[ Parent | on HN ]