This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully only occasionally).
Obviously getting some visibility is important for people launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.
Don't force me to fight an asymmetric warfare battle against malicious authors to participate.
"Weak" is the operative word. Being right doesn't do you much favors if you can't communicate it. In this context, "looking" weak is being weak.
No. Function over form.
The people who already agree that the article is shallow learn nothing, and the people who don't know the article is shallow also learn nothing.
And I agree with you, position strength is tied to facts, which is why writing a shallow dismissal instead of listing some facts leads to a weak position.
Incidentally, why are you responding to me and not just saying "you're wrong, I'm done talking to you."
One synthesis is this: wise strategies depend on the audience composition and time scale.
More people should learn wise ways to quantify future rewards. Reinforcement learning, economics, and finance cover some simple ways. One way is a constant discount factor, but it is not the only nor best way.
Like most clichés, this is easy to say, but hard to apply. It is imprecise and does not capture its own limitations. These three words don't move us forward; we shouldn't fixate on them; we must move beyond them.
Reality exists without perception. It benefits us to clarify the difference. Here are some clearer statements that reflect current philosophical and scientific knowledge:
1. We only perceive a small, incomplete, distorted portion of reality.
2. Human perception is a flawed but useful error-corrected simulation designed to help us survive.
2. Perceptions and beliefs strongly influence individual behavior.
3. Behavior is constrained by reality (perceived or not, believed or not).
4. Over a sufficiently long time scale, individuals and groups who understand reality have a survival advantage.
5. Perceptions can deviate from reality for arbitrarily long time periods.
> Perceptions can deviate from reality for arbitrarily long time periods.
According to the theory, this is not [contained within] reality.
What if the "obviously" correct model you were raised on is not correct? Possible for Newton's theories, but impossible for something even more complex?