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While reading through Matthew Butterick's "Are Two Spaces Better Than One? A Response to New Research" [1], for no other reason than the fact that I enjoy reading Butterick, I came across several things that made me stop and rethink my thoughts on the matter. I might talk about the rest some other day but one in particular I now want to inform how I go about presenting a certain kind of information.
[1] Are Two Spaces Better Than One? A Response to New Research by Matthew Butterick
After summarising the study's findings and talking about the nature and limitation of research questions when it comes to matters of human expression, Butterick talks about how our presentation of an issue matters and that also got me thinking about why we may want to present it one way or the other.
He writes that the authors of the paper open it with, "There has been a long debate on the topic of how many spaces should follow a period." That came as a surprise to me and most likely, to you as well. When was the last time you found yourself confused or unsure about how many spaces should follow a period? Has it even crossed your mind that this is something to be confused about? Maybe it did but as Butterick points out,
This is a duĀbiĀous fulĀcrum for a sciĀenĀtific arĀguĀment, beĀcause it sets up a false equivĀaĀlence. What would we think if a paĀper started āThere has been a long deĀbate about whether men landed on the moon ā¦ā? The fact that cerĀtain peoĀple on RedĀdit have long deĀbated a topic does not mean thereās āa long deĀbateā in the reaĀsonĀable-perĀson sense.
As much importance as the original presentation lends to the matter, there's no denying that it is in the end a misrepresentation and often a conscious one at that. The vocal minority has long been a problem in appraising a situation and this serves as yet another instance of reminding me that just because you're aware of a problem in a particular context doesn't mean you'll recognise it elsewhere.
At least with the vocal minority, it's usually a problem of the viewer's perception that can be corrected by remembering to put things in context. This phrasing though is something that now feels manipulative, a word I use despite knowing it might sound hyperbolic because as Yudkowsky famously pointed out in his legendary work of fan fiction [2],
The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less probable.
[2] Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
So this is to remind myself to not get carried away by debates between enthusiasts on matters that are largely settled for the public, at least when it comes to presenting said debates but also maybe about the debates themselves sometimes. Returning to and closing on Butterick again,
"We should probably be arguing passionately about things that are more important."
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CC0 low-key, 2021-10-20