I would also note that every instance of the word “punch” and “punching” can be replaced by “sanction” or “sanctioning” and the denotational content of the essay would be virtually unchanged. The use of the word “punch” does little but smuggle in the connotations associated with physical violence, in an essay that is ostensibly about sanctions of all sorts, both physical and non-physical.
Edit: I have gone ahead and created a version of the essay with “punch” replaced by “sanction”. I copied the essay into a new markdown document, fixed the formatting, and then ran %s/punch/sanction/g in vim. I fixed one resulting spelling error, but other than that I left the document as-is.
When I saw Gurkenglas’ comment, I had a quick think for “a name for the class of things that “punching” is a metaphor for”, and didn’t come up with anything. But I agree that “sanctions” fits, so thanks for supplying that word.
Still, I’m basically going to ignore this criticism. Not that it’s necessarily unfair or incorrect or anything. (It doesn’t strike me as particularly salient. But I may be atypical, or I may be too close to be objective.)
But I’m not confident I could have reliably anticipated it without also anticipating a bunch of other potential criticisms that would seem similarly important. And I have a hard enough time writing something that satisfies myself. I don’t want to add more prune.
As an aside: I assume it’s just an oversight, but I would prefer if you link your copy back to the original, since it’s publicly listed.
This changed my mind about the parent comment (I think the first paragraph would have done so, but the example certainly helped).
In general, I don’t mind added concreteness even at the cost of some valence-loading. But seeing how well “sanction” works and some other comments that seem to disagree on the exact meaning of “punch”, I guess not using “punch” would have been better
I would also note that every instance of the word “punch” and “punching” can be replaced by “sanction” or “sanctioning” and the denotational content of the essay would be virtually unchanged. The use of the word “punch” does little but smuggle in the connotations associated with physical violence, in an essay that is ostensibly about sanctions of all sorts, both physical and non-physical.
Edit: I have gone ahead and created a version of the essay with “punch” replaced by “sanction”. I copied the essay into a new markdown document, fixed the formatting, and then ran
%s/punch/sanction/gin vim. I fixed one resulting spelling error, but other than that I left the document as-is.When I saw Gurkenglas’ comment, I had a quick think for “a name for the class of things that “punching” is a metaphor for”, and didn’t come up with anything. But I agree that “sanctions” fits, so thanks for supplying that word.
Still, I’m basically going to ignore this criticism. Not that it’s necessarily unfair or incorrect or anything. (It doesn’t strike me as particularly salient. But I may be atypical, or I may be too close to be objective.)
But I’m not confident I could have reliably anticipated it without also anticipating a bunch of other potential criticisms that would seem similarly important. And I have a hard enough time writing something that satisfies myself. I don’t want to add more prune.
As an aside: I assume it’s just an oversight, but I would prefer if you link your copy back to the original, since it’s publicly listed.
I have added a note to the top of the essay making it clear that it’s referring to this post.
Thanks.
This changed my mind about the parent comment (I think the first paragraph would have done so, but the example certainly helped).
In general, I don’t mind added concreteness even at the cost of some valence-loading. But seeing how well “sanction” works and some other comments that seem to disagree on the exact meaning of “punch”, I guess not using “punch” would have been better