Thread by @emilymbender

About once a week, I get email from someone who'd like me to take the time to personally, individually, argue with them about the contents of Bender & Koller 2020. (Or, I gather, just agree that they are right and we were wrong.)

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I don't answer these emails. To do so would be a disservice to, at the very least, the students to whom I do owe my time, as well as my own research and my various other professional commitments.

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It's not that I object to people disagreeing with me! While I am committed to my own ideas, I don't have the hubris to believe I can't be wrong.

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Rather, it's the format that I object to. If said people want to write their own papers, and send them through peer review, great! The conversation that is science continues.

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(For context, I should add: these are not people I already know. They are people contacting me out of the blue and demanding my time.)

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But it has led me to reconsider a bit of my "contacting me" page. Where previously it said "Like (almost) all academics, I'm always delighted to discuss my research with someone who has read my work."

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It turns out that that's not really true. At least the "always" is clearly an overstatement. (Though, in fairness, some of these questions do make it plain the emailer hasn't read my work, at least not carefully.)

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So, I've updated that bit of my page, and in the process added a note about preprints:

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I doubt this will make a difference in the flow of email, but it will make it that much easier for me to just delete the messages I'm not replying to, without spending much energy worrying about it.

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I was tempted to add, but didn't: As a rule, I do not participate in discussions with people who refuse to grant me the presupposition of humanity ("Aren't people just stochastic parrots?")

/fin