The Terror of Error. Murray Gell-Mann, Part 2

Three quarks. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Blogs by their nature do not go through the editing a writer comes to value before new assemblages of words are let out in the world. No matter how many times I reread and revise a post, I am chagrined how often I find, after pressing “publish,” that there is a typo or two. These are not actually random mistypings -- spellcheck usually spots those -- but neurological malfunctions. Bugs in the wetware. I will think one word and type another, and with each rereading my mind automatically sees what I intended and not what I typed. The wound heals over and the scab goes unnoticed. Until I press “publish” and the blunders jump out at me. A good editor can also protect you from worse sins -- errors of fact or logic -- and they can protect you from yourself. From those times you’re blinkered by your own slender wormhole or when you wander too far out on a rhetorical twig. After I began writing this, I came across this observation about blogs by Susan Orlean: