Another useful concept is [The Death of the Author], which i...

Another useful concept is The Death of the Author, which is a part of literary criticism theory that suggests that it might be useful to disconnect what a text actually says from what the author could have intended, as if the author were long dead and you could never ask what they meant at the time of writing:

The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the “passions” or “tastes” of the writer; “a text’s unity lies not in its origins,” or its creator, “but in its destination,” or its audience.

A common clash occurs between the intent of the content creators, who want to be personal with their work with no ill will intended, and the readers who look only at the result on its own.

And so people who say “but I’m not intolerant! you should know this was meant differently” may get told “it doesn’t matter”. That’s very confusing when you’re the kind of person who sees a very strong connection between who you are and the work you create and others don’t extend that courtesy in their interpretation. But as an author or a content creator, you can’t control how your work will be interpreted. You have to make peace with the fact that your intentions cannot be known by strangers, and your text will have to stand on its own.

Writing documentation, writing blog posts, writing your thoughts down: t’s a way to combat the death of the author. If you have explicitly written down the intentions of some software, and what it assumed, then others cannot add assumptions onto you in the future. You are also forced into honesty about what you initially considered and how you perceived the world.

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www.joshbeckman.org/notes/559990431