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Comment by sdfhdhjdw3 | Hacker News Reader

> Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted. Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews.

I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing. The issue is criticizing in a way which is so vague as to be impossible to defend.

It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations.

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>It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations.

Interesting seeing this response after you just posted:

>If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself

Was this a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of your point? Or is vague criticism only unacceptable in academia?

The post I was responding to was the example.

I wanted to claim that you shouldn't make vague criticism. I immediately expected that people would respond as if my claim was that you shouldn't criticize. And sure enough, that's what the post I responded to did.

Me: "You shouldn't make vague criticism"

Response: "OMG you're saying university professors are above criticism."

Do you think I'm being vague here? :-)

You should re-read the response to your post. You are upset because you feel you are not being read, but the problem is that you are not reading others.

It's not exhausting, you're just refusing to understand the other side of the argument.

Criticizing in a vague way is precisely appropriate in a situation where you don't want to make the criticism specific to a single circumstance but are instead trying to make a broader point about a systemic issue.

>It's not exhausting, you're just refusing to understand the other side of the argument.

Do you also accept the "other side" of the argument that the author of the blog post could be wrong?

The grandparent misunderstood why the author was being vague. This is a separate issue from whether the author of the blogpost is right or wrong, it gets very confusing if you try and conflate the two as you are doing right now.

>The grandparent misunderstood why the author was being vague

Perhaps, but only the author can confirm this.

I don't accept either side of the argument as true, my point is simply that telling someone to keep their story to themselves unless they can present an argument that satisfies a scientific standard is missing the point being made. People make arguments that are purposely vague to avoid causing undue harm both to themselves and, believe it or not, to the people they are accusing. Usually you do this because you're not interested in bringing to light the specifics of one particular instance as if this is an isolated case, but rather to let others who may find themselves in a similar circumstance know that they aren't alone.

>telling someone to keep their story to themselves unless they can present an argument that satisfies a scientific standard

I don't see where they made this claim, or a reference to a 'scientific standard'. Can you please point to it?

>If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself.

I'm in favor of specific criticism rather than lumping everyone together or painting with a broad brush, so on that specific point, I agree with the OP. There is no mention about needing to satisfy any specific 'standard' as you claimed. What you quoted doesn't say that either. Anyway, there isn't much meat in this thread arguing over such minutia, so I will just let you have the last word if you'd like to.

You can be in favor of whatever you want, some people like vanilla, some people like chocolate. The issue is when someone who likes vanilla claims that people who like chocolate are acting unprofessionally and doing something wrong or doing something that is purposeless when all that's really happening is the person who likes vanilla fails to even make an attempt to understand why someone would like chocolate.

Feel free to have whatever preference you want, but understand that others may have different preferences from yours and they may have good reasons for those preferences that you simply are not aware of instead of assuming the worst of them.

>What you quoted doesn't say that either.

It absolutely does and the fact that you don't realize that is a good indication you are not discussing this matter in good faith so I thank you for choosing to cease discussing this any further.

Criticizing in a vague way is a great way to make a broader point if people already agree with you.

If they don't, then it's completely unconvincing because it doesn't actually provide any new information.

So if the goal is to gripe to other people who "get it", then sure, vague criticisms are great.

If the goal is to convince people that something is an issue, then all vague criticisms do is establish what your opinion is; they fail to actually provide information that could (justifiably) convince anyone.

At best, they can convince someone to be interested enough to look into it on their own.

The whole purpose of not being specific is to not implicate certain people. This way he can criticize the "whole" industry.

Although its exhausting, one of the things I most appreciate about HN is the willingness of people to sort through those misinterpretations; thank you for doing that.

> I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing.

And my issue wasn't about whether it's OK or not to criticize, nor about the level of detail, but whether his manner of criticism was unprofessional. It was not. You can argue that it's not effective, but there's nothing unprofessional about it.

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