Who cares? If your argument is that essays aren't concerned with facts, then that's a great argument for ignoring the entire genre of essays. Ideas without basis in reality aren't worth anything.
Luckily, some essayists are concerned with facts, so we don't have to throw out the whole genre. But we should absolutely ignore the essays that don't concern themselves with facts.
> If your argument is that essays aren't concerned with facts, then that's a great argument for ignoring the entire genre of essays. [...] Luckily, some essayists are concerned with facts, so we don't have to throw out the whole genre. But we should absolutely ignore the essays that don't concern themselves with facts.
>If your argument is <something undesirable or unreasonable>, then <slippery slope>. Luckily, <me and the majority or authority figures disagree with you>, so <positive outcome>.
That's a straw man fallacy if I've ever seen one. It's a textbook example. Congratulations.
My reply to another user regarding that:
>Paul Graham, on the other hand, is just publishing a simple essay on his very own website; of course I don't expect an exhaustive empirical demonstration on his part, though any kind of factual data can be welcome.
Look, it's not a binary decision (facts/no facts), but a qualitative distinction: it's how I expect facts--whatever those are, but that's another discussion--to be dealt with in a short essay on a personal blog, instead of expecting or wanting essays to be deliberately unconcerned with them.
> That's a straw man fallacy if I've ever seen one. It's a textbook example. Congratulations.
Everyone can read the conversation and see what was said.
> Look, it's not a binary decision (facts/no facts), but a qualitative distinction: it's how I expect facts--whatever those are, but that's another discussion--to be dealt with in a short essay on a personal blog, instead of expecting or wanting essays to be deliberately unconcerned with them.
Okay, if that's what you're saying, I didn't understand that previously, and I'll take some blame for thinking I understood instead of asking clarifying questions.
But, I'll say, the qualitative discussion of "how facts are dealt with" is pretty irrelevant if there aren't any facts to deal with. It's very much not clear that much of PG says in this essay is based in facts at all. Even if you want to argue that quality of evidence is a spectrum, the can still be a 0 value on that spectrum.
Luckily, some essayists are concerned with facts, so we don't have to throw out the whole genre. But we should absolutely ignore the essays that don't concern themselves with facts.