[danielbarla]

Honestly, I had a good laugh until I saw who wrote that. To be fair, I think Bruce is saying that most people will fail to pick truly random words, which is fair.

However, as you point out, it provides no argument against passphrases, aside from referring to them as a "trick". I still don't know how people look at the XKCD explanation (where Randall Munroe actually does a pretty good job of correctly and succinctly detailing the strength of the two password styles [1]), and call it a trick. The only trick is that your mind has an easier time remembering passphrases than it does remembering a similar strength random string.

[1] Specifically, Randall already assumes that the cracker knows that the password is a passphrase, and has the 1000-word list it was picked from.