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Comment by vonklaus | Hacker News Reader

i don't want to misrepresent the parent, but my take was:

Don't cite my work in a narrow, out of contex way, that entirely misrepresents the body of thought I put together which ia almost entirely at odds with your message.

sure, the people should be allowed to say whatever they want, but if you incorrectly attribute qoutes or ideology to someone, in my mind, you lose credibility. so sure you have a right to mistepresent others ideas but unless you have wholly original thought, if you do that, you call into question the validity of your process, all your sources, and ultimately all of your nessage that relies on non primary research/information

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vonklaus, this is precisely how I feel. It's fine if Dan Lyons disagrees with me, but he shouldn't tell people that I'm saying something that I'm not.

You think you have a right to interpret your own words?

It's kind of a basic tenet of poststructuralism that a text can have multiple meanings, one of which might be intended, but none of which uniquely are compelled.

If you don't want to subject your words to interpretation then don't publish. It would be one thing if author was plagiarizing or misattributing, but that doesn't really seem to be the case.

Actually, what's happening is subtler. He quotes 6 words, and then makes a series of statements that could be interpreted as reflecting the ideas of our book.

If he had simply said something along the lines of, "I believe that The Alliance calls for employees to show loyalty to companies, but for companies not to show loyalty to employees" (completely not true, by the way) it would be clear that he was providing his interpretation of our work. As it is, those who don't read the book will take away an impression that is exactly the opposite of what was originally intended. While words are always subject to interpretation by their audience, I object to my words by misinterpreted by another in a major publication.

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