Why Top Posting Has Won

Summary

Why Top Posting Has Won - 2018/06/13 I've recently realised that, in my head, there's a connection between top-posting in email and washing the dishes. Stay with me, I'll see if I can make the connection for you. One of the things that confused and annoyed me as I was growing up was that proverbs contradicted each other. So for example we have "Look before you leap", but we also have "He who hesitates is lost." We have "Absence makes the heart grow fonder", but we also have "Out of sight, out of mind". And so on. So frustrating. It wasn't until some years later that I realised that proverbs aren't in fact intended to capture and express universal truths. Proverbs are a neat, slick, and easy way of expressing those thoughts you already have. Proverbs are a way of avoiding work while still communicating your thoughts. But part of the problem I then see with proverbs is that they can act as "thought terminating cliches". You trot out the proverb, and then no one has to think any more. Everything is done, dusted, complete, clear, and finished. They come as self-contained little nuggets that are left unexamined and unchallenged. Whereas often they should be used as a starting point for further discussion. So, for example, I remember putting off a particular task and I was admonished with "A stitch in time saves nine." Never mind that I didn't actually understand what they were trying to communicate, it turns out that while this piece of wisdom seems unassailable, it's not necessarily right. To see that, let's start by looking at what it is actually trying to say. You have a garment, and a seam has popped, or is starting to fray. There's a danger that it will unravel, and then fixing it could take significantly greater effort. So the idea is that if you attend to it now you can forestall that and save yourself potentially large amounts of work. A single stitch now (although obviously it might actually be more than one stitch) can save having to do many stitches later. A s...