"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Would you rather they add a cat to justify the plural? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._D._C._Willard

(obviously this is indeed an improvement over a solo paper)

As did Yuri Knorozov, linguist who played a major rele in deciphering the Mayan language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Knorozov

> Knorozov listed his cat Asya as a co-author on his work, but the editors always removed her. He always used the photo with Asya (above) as his author photo, and got annoyed when editors cropped her out.[32]

However, Asya was included in his statue.

https://coleandmarmalade.com/2022/08/16/yuri-knorozov-credit...

I usually interpret the “we” in scientific papers as “you (the reader) and me (the author)”.

We don't find that silly at all.

It is silly. The guy may just want to avoid standing out or drawing attention to themselves. "I" is more appropriate for any solo paper. If the author really can't bring themselves to write "I", then they should just avoid the first-person entirely.

(Or maybe this is a field-specific thing. This guy is in a math dept, and I can only speak from the perspective of the social sciences)

I think it's fun when I'm writing documents.

Plural majestic

Try replace each instance of “we” with “I” and you will notice it will sound weird and narcissistic. At least that’s how I (we) feel

It's always better to avoid first person in the paper altogether.

Me, myself, and I.

The Royal “we”.