He is giving his own summary/interpretation of the pamphlet. The things in the article are the takeway points that Phil came up with after reading “Common Errors in History”. If you don’t know what that is, please reread the first paragraph of the post.
I would have liked to see a link to the original mention/recommendation, or at least a little more context for the recommendation. “I bought a copy of Common Errors in History, which someone mentioned recently on LW.” is not a very effective opening sentence for getting me to care about the ensuing post.
I couldn’t find the original mention. It was in a discussion about Christopher Columbus and the common error of believing that people of his time believed the world was flat.
I’m inclined to think that if Google can’t turn up the discussion using some searching for ‘Columbus’ or ‘Common Errors in History’ (as I’ve verified it does not appear to) then you may be mis-remembering the original source of the mention.
Yes, I red[1] the first paragraph, and I know the difference between common errors in history and “Common Errors in History”. But right before the list, PhilGoetz says,
I tried to find some pattern to the “common errors” listed, but this is the best I could do:
And that’s what my first criticism was about: are these the general “takeaways”, or are they takeaways about history, or about errors in writing history? And then the passages are too short to disambiguate the meaning, forcing me to re-read until I think I know what his point is.
[1] I’m taking to spelling the past tense of “read” this way so people don’t have to re-read every sentence that uses it.
It actually costs effort for me, it interrupts my reading flow when I see an obvious spelling or grammatical error.
The theory that the read/read confusion is a major problem is based on an overly simplistic model of the way people read as well. Experiments have shown that people are capable of interpreting words based on contextual cues from later in the sentence—the brain is receiving visual information from words that come positionally later and uses it to resolve ambiguities while parsing text.
The theory that the read/read confusion is a major problem is based on an overly simplistic model of the way people read as well.
To add to what I said above, I know that it works for me, because when re-reading a post, I always find myself having to check back if there isn’t much context. So I’m not sure I’m making a mistake about how people read, just reporting what goes on when I myself read.
The mistake is assuming that because it works for you it will work for others.
I think I’m unusually disrupted by spelling/grammatical errors. I find it extremely hard to read the occasional posts here that use e/em/eir or other gender neutral pronouns instead of he/him/his for example but I assume this is unusual as I haven’t seen anyone else mention it. I find it sufficiently distracting that I will usually give up reading a post that does that.
I had no idea what was going on with e/em/eir. I have never seen them used anywhere else and thought there was some kind of inside joke on lesswrong, something like a play on the word atheist as a’th’ist, as in someone who doesn’t believe in the letter combination ‘th’, or maybe a bad HTML parser trying to insert a th tag, because they seem to be used where the/them/their would be used. It was bugging me enough that I searched for [space]eir[space] and your comment was the first result to directly address it.
The mistake is assuming that because it works for you it will work for others.
Yes, I erred in thinking that others perceived writing the same way I do. I should point out, though, that you erred in thinking that my claim was based on a simplistic model of reading, rather than what has actually been proven to work, albeit in my limited “data set”.
Sorry, didn’t realize I was unique in this regard. Obviously, I can infer the meaning from context too, but sometimes—like at the beginning of the sentence, it takes a second to adjust. And sometimes context can’t even disambiguate.
In contrast, if you see “red”, you immediately think of the sound of the word “red”, which jumps you straight into thinking of past tense. (Again, for me at least.) That’s why every other verb like this works the same way (lead-led, breed-bred, etc.).
You’re the judge here; you tell me! Although FWIW, I don’t see the point of merely reshuffling the ambiguity to a phrase or variation in emphasis that already exists.
He is giving his own summary/interpretation of the pamphlet. The things in the article are the takeway points that Phil came up with after reading “Common Errors in History”. If you don’t know what that is, please reread the first paragraph of the post.
I would have liked to see a link to the original mention/recommendation, or at least a little more context for the recommendation. “I bought a copy of Common Errors in History, which someone mentioned recently on LW.” is not a very effective opening sentence for getting me to care about the ensuing post.
I couldn’t find the original mention. It was in a discussion about Christopher Columbus and the common error of believing that people of his time believed the world was flat.
I’m inclined to think that if Google can’t turn up the discussion using some searching for ‘Columbus’ or ‘Common Errors in History’ (as I’ve verified it does not appear to) then you may be mis-remembering the original source of the mention.
Yes, I red[1] the first paragraph, and I know the difference between common errors in history and “Common Errors in History”. But right before the list, PhilGoetz says,
And that’s what my first criticism was about: are these the general “takeaways”, or are they takeaways about history, or about errors in writing history? And then the passages are too short to disambiguate the meaning, forcing me to re-read until I think I know what his point is.
[1] I’m taking to spelling the past tense of “read” this way so people don’t have to re-read every sentence that uses it.
You’re hoping this “red” thing catches on, I presume? Because it’s not otherwise saving anybody effort.
It actually costs effort for me, it interrupts my reading flow when I see an obvious spelling or grammatical error.
The theory that the read/read confusion is a major problem is based on an overly simplistic model of the way people read as well. Experiments have shown that people are capable of interpreting words based on contextual cues from later in the sentence—the brain is receiving visual information from words that come positionally later and uses it to resolve ambiguities while parsing text.
To add to what I said above, I know that it works for me, because when re-reading a post, I always find myself having to check back if there isn’t much context. So I’m not sure I’m making a mistake about how people read, just reporting what goes on when I myself read.
The mistake is assuming that because it works for you it will work for others.
I think I’m unusually disrupted by spelling/grammatical errors. I find it extremely hard to read the occasional posts here that use e/em/eir or other gender neutral pronouns instead of he/him/his for example but I assume this is unusual as I haven’t seen anyone else mention it. I find it sufficiently distracting that I will usually give up reading a post that does that.
I had no idea what was going on with e/em/eir. I have never seen them used anywhere else and thought there was some kind of inside joke on lesswrong, something like a play on the word atheist as a’th’ist, as in someone who doesn’t believe in the letter combination ‘th’, or maybe a bad HTML parser trying to insert a th tag, because they seem to be used where the/them/their would be used. It was bugging me enough that I searched for [space]eir[space] and your comment was the first result to directly address it.
Spivak Pronouns if you have not yet been enlightened.
I get how it works now, anks.
Yes, I erred in thinking that others perceived writing the same way I do. I should point out, though, that you erred in thinking that my claim was based on a simplistic model of reading, rather than what has actually been proven to work, albeit in my limited “data set”.
Sorry, didn’t realize I was unique in this regard. Obviously, I can infer the meaning from context too, but sometimes—like at the beginning of the sentence, it takes a second to adjust. And sometimes context can’t even disambiguate.
In contrast, if you see “red”, you immediately think of the sound of the word “red”, which jumps you straight into thinking of past tense. (Again, for me at least.) That’s why every other verb like this works the same way (lead-led, breed-bred, etc.).
How about “readed”?
How about “have read”?
“Have read” is already a separate grammatical tense.
How about “did read”, which is the same tense, but with excessive emphasis on the act?
You’re the judge here; you tell me! Although FWIW, I don’t see the point of merely reshuffling the ambiguity to a phrase or variation in emphasis that already exists.