Not that he said, but I guess it was a status thing. Another curious feature of his discourse was that on mailing lists he would never post a direct reply to anything, with a “Re:” in the subject line. He engaged with the conversations, but always framed his postings as if they were entirely new contributions—as if one were to participate here by only posting top level articles. I assume this was also about status.
FWIW, I always struggle to embrace it when I change my mind (“Yay, I’m less wrong!”)
But I admit, I find it hard, “advocating a new point of view” is a lot easier than “admitting I was wrong about a previous point of view”, so maybe striving to do #1 whether or not you’ve done #2 would help change my mind in response to new information a lot quicker?
Did he have a reason for this policy?
Not that he said, but I guess it was a status thing. Another curious feature of his discourse was that on mailing lists he would never post a direct reply to anything, with a “Re:” in the subject line. He engaged with the conversations, but always framed his postings as if they were entirely new contributions—as if one were to participate here by only posting top level articles. I assume this was also about status.
FWIW, I always struggle to embrace it when I change my mind (“Yay, I’m less wrong!”)
But I admit, I find it hard, “advocating a new point of view” is a lot easier than “admitting I was wrong about a previous point of view”, so maybe striving to do #1 whether or not you’ve done #2 would help change my mind in response to new information a lot quicker?