Comments on: Response

By: yochai

yochai — Wed, 31 May 2006 21:17:30 +0000

To Aaron: fair enough, if the implication was that I was criticizing Dan, it was unnecessary. It was in fact an offhand general swipe at all of us in academia, myself as much as others, who tend to think and rank problems in terms of their difficulty and interest as academic objects of analysis, rather than their sheer human significance.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 31 May 2006 09:44:09 +0000

For the record, I am a non-academic reader, and I feel that I understood it just nicely (though I agree that the prose could be a little less tortuous at times). It may be true that there are plenty of academic terms used, but Yochai explains them all as he goes, so all I needed to do is concentrate. Not an unreasonable thing to ask of a reader.

By: Henry

Henry — Tue, 30 May 2006 16:37:01 +0000

Aaron – I think you’re perceiving a degree of animosity on both sides which wasn’t there (I don’t think that Dan’s criticisms were destructive or were perceived as such; nor do I think that Yochai’s comment was an attack on Dan).

By: Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz — Tue, 30 May 2006 15:14:37 +0000

Benkler’s comment that Hunter calls the “death and underdevelopment in millions of children and adults around the globe” merely “pedestrian” is nothing more than a cheap shot. Hunter clearly wrote that it was the economic question that was pedestrian, not the problem itself. Perhaps it’s understandable that Benkler would be irked at someone who criticized his writing style, but that’s no excuse for such out-of-context ad hominems.