Fifty Thousand!

 

I was pleased to discover yesterday that my Sidewise Thinking blog has now hit the 50,000 pageview mark. Last month, there were over 4,300 views, or well over 150 per day.

My first post, "What's SideWise Thinking?", appeared on April 11, 2009. It was an excerpt from the book I was currently working on, Creative Project Management (with Ted Leemann). I've generally put a new post up every Tuesday (with a big gap between July and November 2010), with topics ranging from project and risk management to my two big series on cognitive biases and decision-making disorders.

The most popular piece so far has been "You're Not Being Reasonable," on the rules of reasonable arguing. First published on March 2, 2010, it's gotten over 3,400 page views, helped primarily by a plug from the blog "LessWrong" and a StumbleUpon link.

I don't quite understand why the second most popular post is the 23rd part of my Red Herrings series, "Hume's Guillotine." First published January 24, 2012, it's gotten over 2,200 hits, but I can't find any specific factor driving traffic to that article and that one alone. Next comes "Triage for Project Managers (Part Two)" (February 8, 2011, over 1,700 hits), and "Eyewitness to Murder" (April 13, 2010, with over 1,300). Red herrings strike again with "A Cute Angle (Part 19)" (December 27, 2011, over 1,000 hits).

By comparison, my new blog, Dobson's Improbable History, which has only a little more than a month under its belt, is already exceeding 100 hits per day, with over 3,200 pageviews last month — a much better start.

This is the 149th post I've made to the blog. I made 29 entries in 2009, 31 in 2010, 52 in 2011, and 43 so far this year.

Thanks very much for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy it.

A Cute Angle (Fallacies/Red Herrings Part 19)

Part 19 of Red Herrings covers still more responses to arguments that distract from the argument rather than address it directly. This week, the Genetic Fallacy.

Genetic fallacy

A guy I went to high school with used to claim that calling someone “cute” was an insult, because “cute” originally meant “bowlegged.” According to the OED, that’s wrong. “Cute” is an aphetic (initial vowel dropped) version of “acute,” and originally referred to someone sharp, clever, or quick-witted. A secondary meaning lists “cute” as a synonym of cur, a worthless dog.

Of course, that’s not the sense in which we most commonly use the word today. If I refer to someone as “cute,” I don’t mean bowlegged, clever, or dog-like — I’m usually referring to someone’s physical appearance. (There’s a sarcastic version — “Are you being cute?” — that refers back to the original meaning, but tone of voice usually makes it clear which meaning we intend.)

The genetic fallacy is the argument that because a word or phrase once meant something different, it continues to mean the same thing, regardless of how usage has evolved. The legend that a “rule of thumb” describes the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife has been debunked repeatedly, but even if it were true, it’s not how we use the term today.

Genetic fallacies aren’t always about language. Australia may have been settled in part by British criminals (as was Georgia), but any conclusion about today’s Australians can’t rest on the legal status of its founders.