This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully only occasionally).
Obviously getting some visibility is important for people launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.
Don't force me to fight an asymmetric warfare battle against malicious authors to participate.
"Weak" is the operative word. Being right doesn't do you much favors if you can't communicate it. In this context, "looking" weak is being weak.
No. Function over form.
Like most clichés, this is easy to say, but hard to apply. It is imprecise and does not capture its own limitations. These three words don't move us forward; we shouldn't fixate on them; we must move beyond them.
Reality exists without perception. It benefits us to clarify the difference. Here are some clearer statements that reflect current philosophical and scientific knowledge:
1. We only perceive a small, incomplete, distorted portion of reality.
2. Human perception is a flawed but useful error-corrected simulation designed to help us survive.
2. Perceptions and beliefs strongly influence individual behavior.
3. Behavior is constrained by reality (perceived or not, believed or not).
4. Over a sufficiently long time scale, individuals and groups who understand reality have a survival advantage.
5. Perceptions can deviate from reality for arbitrarily long time periods.