Kenneth Chang

No problem with receiving criticism but just saying everything wrong without citing anything in particular isn't helpful.

Oh, but of course @MBarany didn’t say anything remotely like “everything wrong”. He specifically pointed to the bit touching on the history of probability. And anyone who is actually interested in criticism wld simply ask for clarification—instead of knee-jerk deflection.

I wrote "Not sure what you're complaining about. Furstenberg's and Margulis's work obviously is not probability theory." How is that not asking for clarification?

You mean apart from the fact that what you wrote was not even formally a question (ie a way of “not asking”)? Maybe the first sentence’s dismissive phrasing? Or perhaps the pejorative word choice (“complaining”)?

How is that more dismissive than "love it when the nytimes journalist just runs with the nonsense about 20th century history spouted by the mathematicians he interviews"? How is the original complaint useful?

Funny how the goalposts just shifted from “Sure I asked for clarification” (which you cleverly avoided even saying explicitly) to “What I said was at worst as dismissive as what the other guy said”. That’s really just a Tone Troll, deflecting from the actual criticism.

I don't think "Not sure what you're complaining about" is dismissive. It certainly invites clarification. What did you want me to say? "Thank you for calling my article nonsense. Could you expand on that?"

If someone uses words like nonsense, pejorative, bullshit, troll, knee-jerk deflection, that person is not really trying to offer constructive criticism. @mbararny's 1st tweet was phrased as a complaint; his subsequent tweets were reasonable and informative. Yours not so much.