Alan Jacobs


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A common experience for me: 

  1. Someone tweets (or “X-es”?) about something I’ve written, maybe with a quotation, maybe with a summary;  
  2. Someone else reads that tweet and on the basis of it alone decides what I must have argued … 
  3. … and then writes me an angry email refuting the argument they’re sure I have made. 

The situation reminds me of all those ancient writers we only know through the descriptions of their works by others. Those writers’ work is probably unrecoverable; but not so in this case. My emailers could have secure knowledge with a click but they prefer ignorance.