From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Mon Feb 04 2002 - 14:52:53 MST
On Monday, February 4, 2002, at 03:09 PM, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> The way you convince people is not through repetition of flat
> statements;
> the way you convince people is through the repeated novel variation of
> structured, rational arguments until one of them sinks in. This is
> actually my main problem with Gordon's current Sysop pages; the concepts
> are stated, but not argued. Even if your target audience is core
Eep, I guess I've learned too much about writing from statistics (or
maybe mathematics in general). I try very hard to *not* reargue points
that have already been argued (successfully) elsewhere. But, since I'm
not the only reader (I personally find restatements of arguments
annoying, in general), I should make changes to better suite the average
reader.
Or, maybe another way of putting this bit of writing wisdom is "don't
get too comfortable with your audience; they never know quite as much as
you think that they do".
Well, back to the writing grind stone. ;-)
-- Gordon Worley `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty http://www.rbisland.cx/ said, `it means just what I choose redbird@rbisland.cx it to mean--neither more nor less.' PGP: 0xBBD3B003 --Lewis Carroll
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