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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

For context, McCarthy has been at the Santa Fe Institute since 2014 [1], and so in residence among accomplished scientists conducting serious research. For nearly a decade, McCarthy's day job has been writer among scientists.

Which is to say, McCarthy doesn't merely have an opinion. McCarthy has an informed opinion. He's spent more time among better scientists than most people in the sciences. And of course, he's a better writer than just about anyone giving advice about science writing (and writing in general).

Most writing advice targets poor writers. McCarthy essay targets good writers. Maybe because good writers are good not just for technique but for having interesting things to say. Maybe because something not worth writing in an engaging way probably isn't worth writing.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Institute

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Yes, yes, I get it. Who am I to challegne an authority in scientific writing, that has so many scientist friends to boot. And what do I know about writing anyway, I don't even have a single best-seller under my belt.

Clearly, challenging authorities is not the way of a true scientist.

Though I see your point (that it's good practice to assess logical arguments independent of an author's credentials), brudgers's comment was still quite useful.

I skimmed the comments before deciding to reading the article, and likely would have skipped on this submission if I didn't know about his work at Santa Fe (which was also mentioned in the article itself), as I associate McCarthy with his literary work. I had no previous awareness he has been working with scientists on technical writing.

My point is that McCarthy has an expert opinion and is writing for people who are not struggling toward a first scientific journal publication.

The advice that makes a poor writer acceptable differs from what makes a good writer better.

>> My point is that McCarthy has an expert opinion and is writing for people who are not struggling toward a first scientific journal publication.

I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean that in the context of the article? Are you saying that the article above is aimed at people with some experience of writing?

By the way, your original comment came across as a haughty attempt at a put-down by an appeal to authority, hence my reaction to it. My apologies if I misunderstood your intent.

Yes, that's what he's saying. Scientists at the Santa Fe Institute tend already to have been published, since that's how you get to be a scientist at SFI.

I didn't read their original comment as a put-down of any sort, for whatever that's worth to you. If you jump into an article like this just getting to the tips (a reasonable thing to do!) you might miss the fact that McCarthy has the expertise to back up what he's saying (and, for that matter, miss the audience of his tips, as you might have).

And now you're assuming I didn't read the article. Well done. I've read it, twice, once yesterday and once when it was posted on HN previously a while ago, when I made the same comment about that particular suggestion at the top of the thread.

And you're trying to pull rank via proxy on me. I have the expertise to back up what I'm saying also. See my comment at the top.

There's nothing personal about any of this. I don't even know who you are. But: your "rank" here is that you've taken a course in academic writing and gotten some journal articles accepted, and McCarthy's "rank" is that he's one of the greatest writers of the last 50 years and is in a kind of residency copyediting papers for the Santa Fe Institute. I'd take him seriously. But you do you.

No, no, you misunderstand me. I don't assign any "rank" to myself. You are trying to pull rank on me by proxy, because you do not have any expertise in this matter (you 're not a researcher and you don't publish papers, correct?) and so you're trying to make up for that with an invocation of someone you think I must absolutely agree is an authority not to be disagreed with.

What I'm saying is that I do have relevant expertise because publishing papers is my job, and because I know that doing what McCarthy suggests in my quote above is the opposite of what got my papers published.

You're just trying to shut down the conversation by summoning what you think is a higher power. That doesn't work with people like me, who are expected to take down authorities without fear of browbeating by said authorities or their volunteer cheerleaders, as part of our job. You might as well let me know that Beyoncé disagrees with me, for all the good it will do to remind me that McCarthy is a Best Seller-ist. Who works for the Santa Fe Institute.

Sorry, I felt I had to expound on that because I find it very interesting when it happens.

I can give you the honest accounting of my thought process, since it seems to be of interest to you:

I read your root comment about McCarthy being wrong about repeating words in academic writing. I thought to myself, "this is exactly the sort of dismissal we tend to traffic in here, the assumption that we're subject matter experts on research and STEM and that a writer wouldn't be". I figured a bunch of people on HN would be instantly persuaded by the fact that your comment attests to experience in academic writing, especially since so few of them will closely read the article itself, which notes McCarthy's unexpectedly deep experience with hard science academic writing.

Then I thought to myself, "you know what? Cormac McCarthy is pretty universally considered one of the greatest writers of the last 50 years, so it is probably pretty safe to suggest that his writing advice not be dismissed easily, even by someone with their own deep experience with academic writing". That is to say: it's no great put-down to suggest that someone's own writing experience might be subordinate to that of... Cormac freaking McCarthy. :)

There's nothing especially interesting about "taking down authorities" on HN --- it's the air we breathe here. I do it too, all the time. By the same token: pushing back on that instinct seems totally within the bounds of our discussions as well.

So, long story short: I thought your comment was a bit facile and dismissive, and said why (or: almost did, but deleted my comment when I saw 'brudgers better one, then cosigned theirs).

Hope that helps.

Thank you for the honest explanation, but you can see that brudgers comment was a -- self-confessed -- put-down. My mistake was replying to it in the first place. I guess I dragged you into it, I think we would have a more productive discussion otherwise as I had with others in this thread (mostly disagreeing with them!).

I haven't read anything by McCarthy and I'm always suspicious of Best Seller authors. Anyway I have very non-mainstream views on creative writing. But that's another matter.

You should read Blood Meridian.

Thanks for the recommendation. It doesn't look like my style of book but wikipedia says it's highly acclaimed so I understand why you say he's a great writer.

Arguments from authority are useful, valid, and important as the basis for science…we don’t spend our time arguing about the heliocentric model, the periodic table, and Newtonian physics because of them.

Appeals to authority are fallacious when the authority has expertise in a field other than that in question: McCarthy’s authority on writing, doesn’t lend weight to his opinions on skateboarding, animal husbandry, and nutrition.

One of the most common self serving fallacious uses of authority is I-have-a-PhD.

Here the PhD-fallacy wasn’t this-is-what-works-for-me. It was McCarthy is wrong followed with a bunch of noise over scientific method instead of listening and learning.

My initial comment was performative erudition (HN’s sine qua non) to place a top comment’s sophomoric exposition in context…so yes, I didn’t think much of the comment. But with the bar on the ground, I didn’t expect the follow up to go under it.

There’s no need to apologize.

Ah, so I'm right- your comment was 100% a put-down, aimed at shaming me for not having the illustrious career of McCarthy's friends?

In that case, you are absolutely right that I have no need to apologise. But perhaps you should think about where you place "the bar" next time, in your comments, rather than trying to blame me, for being frustrated at your sarcasm.

Seriously! Reminds me of the famous story of an undergrad who used a text by Richard Feynman as a source for a college paper, and was graded down by her professor. She then contacted Feynman to obtain justification, but Feynman replied:

"Your instructor was right not to give you any points, for your answer was wrong, as he demonstrated using Gauss’ law. You should, in science, believe logic and arguments, carefully drawn, and not authorities."

https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2020/feynmans-advice-to-wm-s...

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