Comment by skrebbel
4 days ago
While I agree with the author’s main argument, it seems weird to single out a blog post (the one from Scott Alexander) whose title includes “Much More Than You Wanted To Know” as being too long. I mean of course it is! It’s right there in the title!
That blog post is explicitly targeted at people who are looking for a nice calm evening of reading about a super weird “way out there” subject. It’s not meant to convince you of an argument quickly and effectively.
It’s a bit like complaining that the “1 pound hangover beater” hamburger at your local grease diner has too many calories.
> title includes “Much More Than You Wanted To Know”
This would be a fair complaint if it couldn’t also serve as a valid subtitle to the entire blog itself and not just a post. Admitting it in the title does not undermine the OP’s point about trying to obscure a poorly-framed argument.
My take from the OP was almost immediately, “Oh yeah, they never read Aquinas, et al”. Clearly that too comes from a fixed viewpoint, my particular Western Classics-style education delivered via US Catholic schools in the ‘80s, but I think there is a lot more honesty in any of old Tommy’s Proofs of God. You may agree or disagree with them, but pretty much anyone without any particular background or prior reading can immediately engage with them whereas the rationalists are doing all this navel gazing, or possibly glazing, around their feeling to make it so you cannot disagree because it’s set up to be a game of manners rather (have you read my other source I cited? How can you say that without reading this other link?) than an argument.
> It’s not meant to convince you of an argument quickly and effectively.
Part of the author's argument is that it doesn't do a good job of arguing at all, let alone quickly and effectively. It just inundates you with so many words and "facts" that people get bowled over by how "smart" it sounds.
Yeah but that doesn’t not make it a super weird example. It makes me wonder where else the author is not writing in good faith.