The Haters Gonna Hate Fallacy

Communication is hard and – importantly – contextual. Most of your readers will be reasonable people

You think this partially because you are not famous or a popular writer.

By the 1% rule of Internet participation, you hear mostly from an extremely self-selected group of critics. You don't hear from the reasonable people, you hear from the unreasonable people. The more popular you get, the more this is true. And there is a lizardman constant going on: there is a fringe of crazy, stubborn readers who will fail to read the most plain and straightforward writing, misinterpret it in the wackiest way, hate you more the better you write, and amplify the craziest things they can find. (At my level of relative obscurity, it's petty stuff: sneers, doxing, death/swatting threats, ML researchers trying to get me fired, FBI visits, that sort of thing. Scott seems to have similar issues, just more so. But by the time you reach Tim Ferriss numbers of readers, this will have escalated to 'attempted kidnappings by organized crime' levels of risk, and he notes that it escalates still further to attempted murder of popular YouTubers etc.)

Combine this with the asymmetry of loss and reward, where criticism hurts a lot more than praise helps, and the more popular you get, the worse you will feel about everything you write or do, regardless of quality.

...Unless you constantly keep in mind: "haters gonna hate". If a criticism doesn't immediately make sense to you or you felt you dealt with it adequately, and it comes from someone you don't already know or trust, then oh well - haters gonna hate. If you're genuinely unsure, run a poll or A/B test or something to hear from a less self-selected sample - but do anything other than naively listening to and believing your critics! That's a luxury permitted only the most obscure or heavily filter-bubbled.

Really like this. Seems like an instance of the general case of ignoring marginal returns. "People will steal even with police, so why bother having police..." This also means that the flip side to your post is marginal returns diminish. It's a good investment to have a few cops around to prevent bad actors from walking off with your grand piano--but it's a very bad idea to keep hiring more police until crime is entirely eliminated. Similarly, it's good to write clearly. But if you find yourself obsessing over every word, your efforts are likely to be misplaced.

I think it would have helped this post to give a couple of examples of the HGHF that you've encountered in the wild.

Broadly agree, but:

“I think [term X] in your post is going to cause misunderstandings, I’d suggest phrasing it differently.”

“Oh, haters are gonna hate, there’s no amount of rephrasing that’s going to prevent this from being misinterpreted if people want to.”

I think I feel differently about this depending on whether the first person has a specific suggestion. Without it, I think that sometimes the second person isn't "not bothering to put in the effort" so much as "doesn't think the effort will pay off", or even "has already put in the effort and this was the result". It may be much easier to notice that something will be misunderstood than to phrase it differently such that it won't be.

I can understand the sentiment of being subtle, articulate, and precise as long as it remains within the bounds of "nitpickers gonna nitpick" or "dislikers gonna dislike" stage, but if you are treading in the realm where you have (or can possibly cultivate) haters, I don't think focusing on presentation works. Also, IMO, if the emotions have already gotten to the stage of being hateful, you might as well stand your ground and say what you have to say instead of selling nuance and subtlety as a point. The reason I say this is because it is a great heuristic to follow when you are already aware of the theme driving your writings; and more often than not the untrue cases(5%) that you mention are not going to change, while the ones who are already well accustomed to the topics and your style are probably only going to be more interested if you stand your ground. The classic example of this would be someone like NNTaleb, whose cult has only grown since he started being more unabashed about his ideas. Not to mention the number of death threats he gets on mainstream twitter alone and who knows how many via other sources. I think the best solution is to follow the heuristic(I mean haters gonna hate heuristic) and be courageous in your writing style, helps offset a lot of other issues such as stress, anxiety, and what not.