(If you don’t like the phrase “pandering to idiots”, feel free to charitably pretend I said something else instead; I’m afraid I only have so much time to edit this comment.)
You know, it’s kind of dishonest of you to appeal to your comment-editing time budget when you really just wanted to express visceral contempt for the idea that intellectuals should be held accountable for alleged harm from simplifications of what they actually said. Like, it didn’t actually take me very much time to generate the phrase “accountability for alleged harm from simplifications” rather than “pandering to idiots”, so comment-editing time can’t have been your real reason for choosing the latter.
More generally: when the intensity of norm enforcement depends on the perceived cost of complying with the norm, people who disagree with the norm (but don’t want to risk defying it openly) face an incentive to exaggerate the costs of compliance. It takes more courage to say, “I meant exactly what I said” when you can plausibly-deniably get away with, “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s just my natural writing style, which would be very expensive for me to change.” But it’s not the expenses—it’s you!
Except you probably won’t understand what I’m trying to say for another three days and nine hours.
You know, it’s kind of dishonest of you to appeal to your comment-editing time budget when you really just wanted to express visceral contempt for the idea that intellectuals should be held accountable for alleged harm from simplifications of what they actually said. Like, it didn’t actually take me very much time to generate the phrase “accountability for alleged harm from simplifications” rather than “pandering to idiots”, so comment-editing time can’t have been your real reason for choosing the latter.
More generally: when the intensity of norm enforcement depends on the perceived cost of complying with the norm, people who disagree with the norm (but don’t want to risk defying it openly) face an incentive to exaggerate the costs of compliance. It takes more courage to say, “I meant exactly what I said” when you can plausibly-deniably get away with, “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s just my natural writing style, which would be very expensive for me to change.” But it’s not the expenses—it’s you!
Except you probably won’t understand what I’m trying to say for another three days and nine hours.