Aside from that—does anyone actually “think formulaic writing is good writing”?
Yes.
What I do see is some people saying “this article was hard to read and would have been improved by more indication of where it’s going, the sort of thing that writing-by-formula tends to encourage”. I hope you can see the difference between “formulaic writing is good” and “this specific element of one kind of formulaic writing is actually often a good idea”.
The title tells you exactly what the article is about and where it was going.
And your own articles on LW, thesis statements or no, seem to me to have the key property BBDD is complaining casebash’s lacks: it is made clear from early on where the article’s going, and there are sufficient signposts to keep the reader on track.
The article isn’t ambiguous, however. If anything, it’s overextended and overwritten in support of that point—yes, we get it, everybody in the construction is suspicious of everybody else’s incentives and for genuinely good reasons, and everybody is engaging in motivated reasoning.
The only “confusing” aspect is if you read the body of work looking for a hidden purpose.
The title tells you exactly what the article is about and where it was going.
Except that most of the article makes rather little contact with the idea stated in the title, and instead concerns incidental details of the squabble between the As and the Bs. Or, to put it differently:
it’s overextended and overwritten
This is exactly why …
you read the body of work looking for a hidden purpose.
The article reads very much like other articles I have read before that have a hidden purpose. So I think there may be one. Why is that unreasonable?
Except that most of the article makes rather little contact with the idea stated in the title, and instead concerns incidental details of the squabble between the As and the Bs.
The incidental details are the point of the article, however; they’re an in-depth example of how the incentives of the two groups interact and intersect.
The article reads very much like other articles I have read before that have a hidden purpose. So I think there may be one. Why is that unreasonable?
Instrumentally, it detracted from your understanding of the article.
The incidental details are the point of the article [...] in-depth example [...]
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as “overextended”.
it detracted from your understanding of the article.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as “overextended”.
Quite, yes. I don’t think it’s a perfect article—indeed, my primary issue with the criticisms of it are that they are criticizing the wrong things.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
I have no idea. But you’ve indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
you’ve indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
I’ve indicated that I found it harder to read than it should have been because of the barrage of incidental details and the constant feeling that it’s really about something else besides its surface meaning.
I was (as you will readily see if you read my original comment) perfectly well able to extract what in your view was the entire point of the article. I just felt like I had to do more work to do so than was warranted.
[EDITED to add:] It seems that you actually had the same experience. So apparently we are agreed that casebash’s article was stuffed with unnecessary incidental details, that it gave the impression of having some kind of hidden meaning, and that these made it harder to read; the difference is … what? That you have decided, I know not on what basis, that I was “mindkilled” whereas you “treated it as practice in dealing with mindkilling”. Except that you haven’t offered any actual evidence that I was mindkilled (I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, for what it’s worth) or that I was any less successful than you were in understanding the article.
You do make one specific complaint about a line of criticism that, e.g., buybuydandavis and I have made. We say that it’s not clear where the article is heading and it could have used more signposts up front; you say no, there’s a thesis statement right in the title and that’s all anyone needs. (And you suggest that this indicates a failure to make sense of the article, which you blame on mind-killed-ness.)
But you are missing the point. The title, considered as thesis statement, is manifestly insufficient to explain what’s going on in the article, because most of the article consists of (what you yourself describe as) overextended elaboration of details of the argument between the As and the Bs. This is what readers could use some help in navigating. With only the title to go on, the best we can do is to pay careful attention to each paragraph and analyse the motivations of both As and Bs therein. But that’s a lot of work for very little payback, because then basically every paragraph is telling us more or less the same thing in more or less the same way.
What would have helped with this is some framing material at the start indicating one or more of the following: (1) This story is functioning as a metaphor for such-and-such a thing in the real world; you will follow the details more easily if you match them up with reality. (2) The details of this story aren’t terribly important in themselves; if you ignore some of the details you will lose nothing. (3) The really important bit of this story, as far as the point of the article goes, is such-and-such; the rest is there just to give it context.
… Or, of course, just losing about half of the incidental details. But buybuydandavis and I were both willing to give casebash the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a reason why all those details were there.
Yes.
The title tells you exactly what the article is about and where it was going.
The article isn’t ambiguous, however. If anything, it’s overextended and overwritten in support of that point—yes, we get it, everybody in the construction is suspicious of everybody else’s incentives and for genuinely good reasons, and everybody is engaging in motivated reasoning.
The only “confusing” aspect is if you read the body of work looking for a hidden purpose.
Except that most of the article makes rather little contact with the idea stated in the title, and instead concerns incidental details of the squabble between the As and the Bs. Or, to put it differently:
This is exactly why …
The article reads very much like other articles I have read before that have a hidden purpose. So I think there may be one. Why is that unreasonable?
The incidental details are the point of the article, however; they’re an in-depth example of how the incentives of the two groups interact and intersect.
Instrumentally, it detracted from your understanding of the article.
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as “overextended”.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
Quite, yes. I don’t think it’s a perfect article—indeed, my primary issue with the criticisms of it are that they are criticizing the wrong things.
I have no idea. But you’ve indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
I’ve indicated that I found it harder to read than it should have been because of the barrage of incidental details and the constant feeling that it’s really about something else besides its surface meaning.
I was (as you will readily see if you read my original comment) perfectly well able to extract what in your view was the entire point of the article. I just felt like I had to do more work to do so than was warranted.
[EDITED to add:] It seems that you actually had the same experience. So apparently we are agreed that casebash’s article was stuffed with unnecessary incidental details, that it gave the impression of having some kind of hidden meaning, and that these made it harder to read; the difference is … what? That you have decided, I know not on what basis, that I was “mindkilled” whereas you “treated it as practice in dealing with mindkilling”. Except that you haven’t offered any actual evidence that I was mindkilled (I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, for what it’s worth) or that I was any less successful than you were in understanding the article.
You do make one specific complaint about a line of criticism that, e.g., buybuydandavis and I have made. We say that it’s not clear where the article is heading and it could have used more signposts up front; you say no, there’s a thesis statement right in the title and that’s all anyone needs. (And you suggest that this indicates a failure to make sense of the article, which you blame on mind-killed-ness.)
But you are missing the point. The title, considered as thesis statement, is manifestly insufficient to explain what’s going on in the article, because most of the article consists of (what you yourself describe as) overextended elaboration of details of the argument between the As and the Bs. This is what readers could use some help in navigating. With only the title to go on, the best we can do is to pay careful attention to each paragraph and analyse the motivations of both As and Bs therein. But that’s a lot of work for very little payback, because then basically every paragraph is telling us more or less the same thing in more or less the same way.
What would have helped with this is some framing material at the start indicating one or more of the following: (1) This story is functioning as a metaphor for such-and-such a thing in the real world; you will follow the details more easily if you match them up with reality. (2) The details of this story aren’t terribly important in themselves; if you ignore some of the details you will lose nothing. (3) The really important bit of this story, as far as the point of the article goes, is such-and-such; the rest is there just to give it context.
… Or, of course, just losing about half of the incidental details. But buybuydandavis and I were both willing to give casebash the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a reason why all those details were there.