It seems like your approach would work well in fields like programming. It’s a practical skill with a lot of people working in it and huge amounts of money at stake to figure out best practices. Plus, the issue he’s addressing doesn’t seem to be controversial.
Outside that safe zone, prose quality isn’t a proxy for the truth. And I think it’s these issues that Elizabeth’s worried about.
For example, how many windows are there in your house? If you wanted to answer that question without getting out of your chair, you’d probably form a mental image of the house, then “walk around” and count up the windows.
Reading their diametrically opposed papers on the same topic, I’m sure I couldn’t tell who’s right based on their prose. It’s formal academic writing, and the issue is nuanced.
It seems like your approach would work well in fields like programming. It’s a practical skill with a lot of people working in it and huge amounts of money at stake to figure out best practices. Plus, the issue he’s addressing doesn’t seem to be controversial.
Outside that safe zone, prose quality isn’t a proxy for the truth. And I think it’s these issues that Elizabeth’s worried about.
For example, how many windows are there in your house? If you wanted to answer that question without getting out of your chair, you’d probably form a mental image of the house, then “walk around” and count up the windows.
At least, that’s what the picture theorists think. Others think there’s some other process underlying this cognition, perhaps linguistic in nature.
Reading their diametrically opposed papers on the same topic, I’m sure I couldn’t tell who’s right based on their prose. It’s formal academic writing, and the issue is nuanced.