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turkey99 | 2 years ago

It’s an interesting topic but I find the article’s writing style impenetrable.

For example:

> The polish applied in adjectival designation inclines one to believe that a definition has been achieved, a conclusion won. A pile of qualities furnishes a synoptic view of the whole, and so begins the slippage from the conditional mood to the declarative.

Sorry, me too dumb to parse. This is just one sentence picked at random

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seabass-labrax|2 years ago

I think that, with phrases like "applied in adjectival designation" and "conditional mood to the declarative", this is the author subconsciously admitting that he'd rather have been a research fellow in linguistics than in culture!

timeagain|2 years ago

Ok I enjoyed the article as a piece of self-indulgence. I agree it is pretentious and I don’t write like that. But just for funsies:

“Once your ‘personality type’ has been found, it feels like you know something definitive about who you are. You only answered some small number of questions about small segments of your life, but the quiz authoritatively asserts it has seen you to the core. In this way the quiz turns ‘when X happens I do Y’ statements into ‘I am X kind of person so I always do Y’ statements. This is probably bad.”

mjfisher|2 years ago

"Once you describe something, people tend to believe the description is complete in all cases over time"

Just bad writing.

throwanem|2 years ago

Bad reading, rather say. The impatience is typically qualified as that of men (it is always men) with too much on their hands and not enough time, but eventually the impression becomes inescapable of the infant in a high chair mewling for the next spoonful of baby food.

Besides, it's a bit rich to complain of excess length after the author has handed you his entire thesis by the end of the second paragraph. If you keep going after that despite not caring for the style, you're either a glutton for punishment or not paying attention.

kstenerud|2 years ago

I made the mistake of reading the entire article, expecting some kind of structure and conclusion. But it just rambled on for pages and pages in this same obtuse and verbose manner, like a Grandpa Simpson with a few more IQ points but the same strength of mind.

AlbertCory|2 years ago

Thanks for pinpointing it. There was something about this I just found offputting. Like the author's trying too hard.

Interestingly enough, I'm finishing up an article about open office plans and return-to-office, and I realized that the people who decide these things are overwhelmingly Extroverted, in MBTI terms. They think those Introverted types who like some private space to think need to be dragged out into the open where they can Communicate.

There actually are scholarly articles about which MBTI types should be leaders and managers. I won't burden you with them here.

torlok|2 years ago

It reminds me of how Eric Weinstein talks. It's either a complete lack of communication skills, or will to actually share knowledge, just an attempt to make what you're talking about seem impenetrable. It's a sad display of intellectual insecurity by the author.

mistersquid|2 years ago

> It’s an interesting topic but I find the article’s writing style impenetrable.

FWIW, the sentence you’ve selected scans even with no context (I haven’t [yet?] read the article).

Disclosure: I have professional experience in literary critical theory.

rnewme|2 years ago

Your comment means nothing to me. What does scans mean in this context?