epistemic status: haven’t read “The Sense of Style” but I did read “Clear and Simple as the Truth”
I generally agree with your points on the consequences of using classic style & I like this post for naming and explaining them. But I don’t think classic style is bad in principle; rather, it’s bad in certain contexts (like on the LessWrong forum, but not e.g. in fiction books or manuals), and I wish you had more explicitly stated those contexts in which you think it is bad.
I think Academic papers could benefit with more of this classical style (not taken the whole way). Often I see “in section III we address the impact of the RW approximation.” I scroll down. The title of Section III is “Impact of the RW approximation”. So that was pointless. Often I see “In contrast to the analysis of Whoever et al we here account for foo via a blah blah blah” and similar. These serve to neatly partition the credit, drawing a line in the sand around what is new in this paper. As a reviewer these statements are useful, but as a reader of the paper who is not the reviewer they are a waste of space. I came to learn about apples, not about the division of novelty points between apple studiers. Ideally this kind of meta-data could be contained in a “letter to the referees” which could be linked to the paper online.
Although recommending full-on classical style for anything seems nuts. “This manual describes the operation of the widget type A27, it is not suitable for other models.”- Forbidden.
When reading an academic paper, you don’t find it useful when the author points out their contributions? I definitely do. I like to know whether the author asserts ϕ because it’s the consensus in the field, or whether the author asserts ϕ because that’s the conclusion of the data. If I later encounter strong evidence against ϕ then this difference matters — it determines whether I update against that particular author or against the whole field.
Its a matter of taste maybe. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever found it useful (outside refereeing). I was recently reading about how you quantify a particular thing. Instead of providing the equation in a self-contained way (which would have taken 3 lines of maths, and 2 sentences) the paper explained it sideways by first giving someone else’s (wrong) suggestion and then explaining how they have modified that. I really just wanted the right method stated clearly. Providing the whole apparatus of a wrong method then a text explaining what changes will make it right makes it clearer who has discovered what, but its really bad for the useability of the paper.
epistemic status: haven’t read “The Sense of Style” but I did read “Clear and Simple as the Truth”
I generally agree with your points on the consequences of using classic style & I like this post for naming and explaining them. But I don’t think classic style is bad in principle; rather, it’s bad in certain contexts (like on the LessWrong forum, but not e.g. in fiction books or manuals), and I wish you had more explicitly stated those contexts in which you think it is bad.
I think classic style is bad for all the situations that Pinker endorses it:
Academic papers
Non-fiction books
Textbooks
Blog posts
Manuals
This is because I can’t think of any situations where the five limitations I mention would be appropriate.
I think Academic papers could benefit with more of this classical style (not taken the whole way). Often I see “in section III we address the impact of the RW approximation.” I scroll down. The title of Section III is “Impact of the RW approximation”. So that was pointless. Often I see “In contrast to the analysis of Whoever et al we here account for foo via a blah blah blah” and similar. These serve to neatly partition the credit, drawing a line in the sand around what is new in this paper. As a reviewer these statements are useful, but as a reader of the paper who is not the reviewer they are a waste of space. I came to learn about apples, not about the division of novelty points between apple studiers. Ideally this kind of meta-data could be contained in a “letter to the referees” which could be linked to the paper online.
Although recommending full-on classical style for anything seems nuts. “This manual describes the operation of the widget type A27, it is not suitable for other models.”- Forbidden.
When reading an academic paper, you don’t find it useful when the author points out their contributions? I definitely do. I like to know whether the author asserts ϕ because it’s the consensus in the field, or whether the author asserts ϕ because that’s the conclusion of the data. If I later encounter strong evidence against ϕ then this difference matters — it determines whether I update against that particular author or against the whole field.
Its a matter of taste maybe. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever found it useful (outside refereeing). I was recently reading about how you quantify a particular thing. Instead of providing the equation in a self-contained way (which would have taken 3 lines of maths, and 2 sentences) the paper explained it sideways by first giving someone else’s (wrong) suggestion and then explaining how they have modified that. I really just wanted the right method stated clearly. Providing the whole apparatus of a wrong method then a text explaining what changes will make it right makes it clearer who has discovered what, but its really bad for the useability of the paper.