Essay talk:The Secret (Chapter by Chapter Commentary)

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While you were out, I was studying the blade[edit]

@Vorarchivist

Hey Vora, I'm bored af, so I read your draft. Imma give you my hot takes:

  • Looking at some of the other chapter by chapter debunking of books on the site (like this one) I noticed that this side by side formatting is used:
Summary of paragraphRationalWiki response
Like every chapter from the secret this starts with quotes from authors, philosophers and chiropractors. Each of these people are usually listed as having multiple specialties, often including ones that seem applicable but also unprovable like visionary and metaphysician so it seems like they know what they're talking about. These quotes in question are empty to the point of parody saying things like "This is the Great Secret of Life." This is obviously a front loaded appeal to authority so when you start reading the baffling concepts within you'll be thinking that there are dozens of professionals that agree.


Not that I don't like the way this currently reads, I just also like the side by side methodical approach. For me they seem more digestible and structured. It also looks awkward that one chapter by chapter article looks different from the other ones. But meh, the article is still awesome.

  • You said you got the book in a pdf version from a friend? Does the pdf version have the ISBN printed in it by any chance? This is the recommended way of citing page numbers. If you tell me the ISBN I would be happy to go through all the refs in this article and format them, cause I have no life and shit, and I like making small improvements to the mainspace ("It's not much, but it's honest work").
  • I made the reflist triple column instead of single column to take up less space, feel free to revert if you think it looks trash.
  • At the very end, this line: "This chapter mostly repeats things so I skipped a lot of pages." made me laugh and I think it's funny, but I also feel that if a true believer of this Secret thingy reads that they might be like "You are lazy and you didn't even read the entire thing! Checkmate libcuck!" Or I don't know, maybe they will laugh as well, or maybe it doesn't matter what we say to them (they will feel offended anyway). I personally wouldn't amid to skipping pages, but I don't feel like that's a major thing. (also why is the last line in a box?)

I thank you for reading the entire book so that we don't have to. You absolute unit. This is a fun article. Hope you are well dude. - Rairyu75 (Talk) 23:03, 19 September 2020 (UTC)