That's not a refutation. Find something specific I said about painting that he has shown to be false, not merely also true of some other field.

For example, pick one of the list of statements I made about painting that he quotes in that list in the middle, and explain how you feel he has refuted it. Or any other statement about painting he quotes.

Your argument was that painting has an interesting connection to hacking.

"No it doesn't," your critic argues, "because in fact you can make the same argument about many other professions --- for an absurd example, take pastry chefs".

Unless we're secretly on Usenet, he's refuted your argument. He used evidence to deny the premise of your essay.

Draw his argument out further, and you can make the same statements about law, insurance, and surgery. For instance, "because constitutional lawyers leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing." Or, "a lot of the great innovations in corporate reinsurance are the work of multiple hands, though there may only be only a few names in the list of partners at the firm".

Also: it took time to re-read your essay, read his essay, jog my memory about your book, and write that response. I'm not sure I feel like your response to me dignified that work. Can you respond this time without redefining the word "refute" to suit your argument?

The challenge I gave you was to find any specific statement I made about painting that he has shown to be false. It's a disingenous trick to claim that the thesis of the essay is implicitly a statement about painting. Not that he has even refuted that. But put that point aside for the time being, and let's return to my original challenge, which I hope is clear now. Find one specific sentence or series of sentences I wrote about painting that he has shown to be false.

If my understanding of painting is "superficial," I should have made lots of mistakes, right? So let's have one.

Sorry, Paul. I read your essay and his as essays, not as series of independent sentences to be reviewed like lines of C in a group code review. I therefore reject the premise that I am somehow obligated to find an individual statement in it that is provably false.

Next, since you wrote the essay and not me, you're clearly in a position to dictate what the essay "is about". Clearly, both me and your critic read it as being "about" the connection between hackers and painters. I muster as evidence the facts that:

* The essay was titled "Hackers and Painters"

* The essay said there was an interesting connection between hackers and painters in the topic sentence of the lead graf.

* Of the 89 grafs in the essay, 26 have as their topic the connection between programming and painting.

* Of the 17 sections in the essay, 10 of them have as their thesis statement either a specific connection between programming and painting, or an explanation of why that connection is important.

If you want to argue that your essay is "about" something other than painting, there's not much I can about that other than to complain about unfairness. I'd rather not.

As to whether your understanding of painting is superficial, I certainly wouldn't know. But your critic repeatedly and explicitly says it is, again with evidence. Which of his arguments ring false to you? You might start with his footnotes.

I've seen quite a lot of evasions when I asked people to get specific, but this is definitely the longest.

I didn't ask you to find a passage that's provably false, just any specific statement I made that you feel he's refuted. It's a red herring to suggest that simply because I ask you for evidence, I'm somehow claiming that essays work like math.

You're not of course obligated to provide evidence, when asked for it, but most people on forums do so voluntarily in order to preserve their credibility.

You said:

"Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike."

Your critic refuted that hacking and painting have much in common, and probably (but obviously speculatively) that hackers and painters are among the "most alike" of all the people you know.

And again, this appeared to me to be the central argument of your essay; it would not have been so widely noted had it argued instead that "hackers are like everyone who does constructive work", because by enlisting gardeners, grade school teachers, and psychologists, that argument reduces to "hackers are like many of the people you know". A barista at Intelligentsia Cafe downstairs from me invented an excellent drink --- horchata with a shot of espresso. Hackers are apparently also like him.

At this point, because you are calling me names instead of rebutting any point I make, I can only guess that you think none of these points are valid, and that hackers and painters share a unique bond, one that you feel your art education and work history allowed you to reveal in an essay (were it not so, the topic wouldn't merit the work you put into it). If you're seriously asking me the questions you're asking because you want to know the answer, and not because you want to win an argument, I'll say that when I read "Hackers and Painters" originally, I agreed with you. When I read your critic, I believe him more: there's there's little interesting to say about the relation between hacking and painting as practiced by modern professional artists.

"Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike."

Well, he certainly didn't refute the first sentence. Arguing that other things have a lot in common with hacking doesn't prove that painting doesn't. And I don't see how either you or he could say anything about the second. You don't know who I know. And I didn't even say they were the most alike of people I'd known, only among the most alike.

You both pretend I'd written "Hacking has more in common with painting than any other field." But if I'd meant that, I would have said it.

In fact, I say explicitly that what hackers have in common with painters is that they're both makers, and I mention other types of makers (writers and architects) who are also like hackers. The kinds of work I claim hacking is unlike are math and science, which I think is an important point, because lots of people have tried to push it into the mold of one or the other.

Now that's settled, will you answer my original question? Can you give me an example of a specific statement about painting that he's refuted? Not (what he claims is) the thesis of my essay, but one of the statements I make specifically about painting. As you point out, he attacks these "repeatedly and explicitly," with footnotes. I'm asking you to produce just one you feel is convincing, to support your claim that he has "carefully refuted" me.

The reason I'm asking is because I think you'll find, when you look more closely, that you've been convinced by the form of his arguments (the emphatic tone, the citations) without actually understanding them. But go ahead, prove me wrong.

I see your point, Paul. But if all you're saying is that hackers are like "makers", your essay is really boring. There is nothing special about being a "maker". And because you've applied no rigor to defining the term, you haven't even set up a comparison: you can substitute "mathematician" as easily as "painter" or "bicycle builder".

Meanwhile, your critic has provided several examples of ways hackers are specifically unlike painters. For instance, you felt painters needed to know about paint chemistry, like hackers need to know about big-O notation. No, your critic says, most painters don't know anything about paint chemistry, just "fat over lean". Painters, the critic very credibly notes, also get laid more than hackers.

I've answered your original question several times over now. You seized on the word "refute" and demanded that I provide a specific statement that the critique refutes. I caved and said, "ok, you said hackers are more like painters than most other people you know". You've now backed off that statement, which I still read as the core of your argument. You've now mooted the argument. I'm fine with that.

I agree, the critique is stylish and fun to read, and more convincing for it. Maybe that's not fair. But your essay got more attention, so I wouldn't worry.

Where did I back off any statement? I still think hackers are more like painters than most other types of people I know.

I notice now that you've finally produced a specific statement about painting that you claim he's refuted, though. And you are mistaken, as I think even you will have to agree. What I wrote was:

  All the time I was in graduate school I had an 
  uncomfortable feeling in the back of my mind 
  that I ought to know more theory...

  Now I realize I was mistaken. Hackers need to 
  understand the theory of computation about as 
  much as painters need to understand paint chemistry.

In other words, I am in fact saying that painters don't need to know a lot about paint chemistry, and using that as an analogy in statement that hackers, similarly, don't need to know much about the theory of computation.

Is this finally starting to give you second thoughts about the idea that he's "carefully refuted" me?

I think he wrote carefully --- his critique is funny, a fast read, and works on multiple levels (as a parody of your writing style, as a reasoned criticism of your argument, and as a takedown of the cult of personality that surrounds you). I don't think either of your arguments are particularly careful anymore.

But you're right, if one chooses to be harshly analytical about your essay, it is indeed hard to pin you down to something that can be refuted directly.

Again: he wrote something clever and funny about you. You should be flattered. Right now, you really just seem petulant.

Yeah, I'm done here. I thought to bring some logic to the table, but with this sentence "Painters, the critic very credibly notes, also get laid more than hackers," its clear that logic will have no part of it. What that sentence has to do with anything about proving or disproving the actual original point of PG's essay I don't know, and probably never will. We're so far removed from what matters or counts as reasoning thats its useless to continue.

You clearly haven't read any of what we're talking about.

Seriously, did you two just spend all this time discussing a simile? Can a simile even be wrong if one thing is right? I'm with PG on this one, if he wants to think hackers are like painters then he can. If someone wants to write that they are not alike, then they can, which will presumably be refuted by another PG essay on why they are, in fact, alike. Either way, hackers and painters can be like lots of other people, because its a free world and everyone can make up their own damn simile if they please.

In PG's defense, the critic tried to actually disprove the simile. Unfortunately, as he himself pointed out, hackers can be like painters in that they are both makers. The critic then goes on to say they are nothing like each other, having just pointed out that PG came up with something where they are, in fact, like each other. When you're writing an article disproving something someone said, its not wise to disprove yourself as well. It just makes reading it a big waste of time.

If it's really "just a simile", than Graham's original essay doesn't say much, does it?

I can see why PG is getting a little out of sorts. You're really missing the point. And so does the critic. Its not about deconstructing the simile to see if its valid. Who really cares if hackers are like painters? That's why the critic had a hard time finding a thesis statement, because he wasn't looking for the right thesis. The point was that writing code takes creativity and imagination. Its not just a rote exercise or an academic endeavor. If the critic had wanted to refute pg's thesis, therefore, he would be trying to prove that hacking doesn't take imagination or creativity and that any joe who knows a programming language can create an amazing site/app. Instead, the critic concentrated on a simile used to explain the thesis, which can easily be substituted for another simile, as the critic pointed out. Substituting a more appropriate simile, however, does not refute the point of the essay. Essentially, all the critic ended up saying was that in his opinion, PG used a bad simile. The point of PG's essay remains valid: it takes creativity and imagination to be a good hacker, and its wrong to characterize the profession as something that lacks that creativity.