A great quote from the article:<p>&quot;The defensive writing style also encourages another sort of ugliness, which is that “avoiding saying something wrong” becomes a primary focus of the writing, rather than communicating or exploring ideas which the author might himself be unsure of.&quot;<p>One thing that&#x27;s great about Gwern Branwen&#x27;s writing is that Gwern&#x27;s essays are accompanied by a &quot;belief tag&quot;. That tag gives the ability to say &quot;This essay is exploratory; I don&#x27;t have a high degree of confidence that it&#x27;s canonically true.&quot; Details here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;About#belief-tags" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;About#belief-tags</a><p>Having the option to dissociate ideas from one&#x27;s person can give a lot of freedom to put contrarian ideas out there and spark debate in search of the Truth without fearing personal attack. Indeed, one of the things that I consider to make a healthy company culture is that ideas can be criticized without the people behind the ideas feeling criticized themselves.