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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

"If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas."

But, the example you give is one that criticizes Joe Schmoe, not X. How about just "X is wrong", and leave Joe out of it so that the discourse is about the rightness or wrongness of X.

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If your talk is in response to another talk by someone else, and you're taking slides and content from their talk and reacting to them, it's important that your audience know what the initial talk was. They have to have the context of the debate, including who is on each side, to fully investigate both sides and reach their own conclusions.

Well, maybe don't do that then. You could address the ideas from that talk instead of the talk specifically, and have a slide, like, "My talk is a response to this other talk by this person and I encourage you to check it out".

Like I'm not saying that I think you _should have to_ do this, but you could do it without compromising the thing you say is important.

It isn't sensible to rebut an abstract that nobody claimed. He could claim that notebooks are wonderful, but that would be less intellectually useful because it puts the onus on the listener to find and compare alternative opinions. He is, as speakers really should be encouraged to do, providing an easy reference to strong competing ideas and also providing a specific case of why he thinks they are wrong.

It is a horrible mistake to bring people in and give them attributes they don't have (eg, "Joe Schmoe is an idiot who is wrong about X" is objectionable). It is good practice to reference where mistaken claims are being made (as in this case "Joe Schmoe said X and that is wrong" is helpful to the listeners).

I am very doubtful that Joel Grus' identity is so tied to his jupyter-scepticism that this talk represents a personal attack. It is completely routine debate and possibly quite fun for all involved.

Saying "Joe Schmoe is wrong about X" doesn't imply "Joe Schmoe is wrong about everything". In fact it helps advancing and encouraging debate when someone can say "Joe Schmoe is wrong about X" AND admit "Joe Schmoe is right about Y".

If Joe Schmoe is a very public proponent of X, then everyone will make that connection themselves.

Also, if Joe Schmoe and Alice Shclalice have different, but aligned, support of X, it can be useful to your audience to identify different parts of your criticism as "this is how I disagree with Joe" and "this is how I disagree with Alice".

Which still uses language that criticizes the people: "how I disagree with $PERSON". To keep a discourse civil, don't allow it to become personal.

In my view, the discourse from the conference was already civil. Can you explain your point of view a bit more?

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