Interestingly, I saw an example of the phenomenon of people getting mad at the certainty of an essay in this very site, a few days ago.
Someone was telling the author that he would achieve more if he phrased his point in a more "polite" way, just because the certainty of the writing made the critic mad. Thankfully, the author was here in the comments responding, and he didn't budge.
That interaction was very refreshing for that very reason: The author was right, knew he was right, someone didn't like that the author knew he was right, but the author remained steadfast.
To be very clear here (I missed this thread when it came up, sadly): I don't care that he's right (and I'm willing to buy that he's right!), I just believe he went about positioning his argument in the wrong way.
There is a very serious problem in any privacy/security discussion right now where, like it or not, the average person is poking their head in and wanting to learn more. There's a wealth of misinformation and paranoia strewn all over, and a tone like this is needlessly rude and condescending... which doesn't help provide a place where people can learn.
His entire point is that people ("technologists") need to stop recommending encrypted email, but the tone with which the article is written will drive away anybody who's actually recommending it. It's (IMO) effectively shouting into the void.
People seem to have this idea that I'm personally offended by what he wrote, when I couldn't care less (as I don't LARP, myself) - I genuinely (usually) like reading stuff from him, whether it's comments on here or elsewhere. ;P
I believe people arguing "politeness" are missing the point, though. What I most value is "dialectics" (not sure if that term is commonly used in English).
I. e. the willingness to entertain the best argument against your position in good faith. Two people who are excellent in doing so (and familiar to HN) would be Scott Alexander of slatestarcodex, and Matt Levine at Bloomberg.
(Someone rather bad at it, usually arguing against some caricature of what he imagines his opposition to be, and generally tending towards the "either unactionable, obvious, or wrong" end of the spectrum is, well, Paul Graham.)
A clear and even-keeled accommodating of an argument - one very discordant from your own argument - is a rare find these days. People feign even-handedness but what seems a fair shake to them doesnt to others who happen to sit a little further, in the spectrum of opinions.
There's a fine line. PG's essay is about usefulness. An essay is probably more useful if a point can be made just as strongly but in a way that a greater number of readers will receive it well.
It's one thing to argue exactly how much politeness is necessary and whether a specific article meets the standard or not, but it seems ridiculous to write off the entire concept of politeness. If someone wrote an article arguing a point and included tons of expletives at anyone who believed otherwise -- even if they're fully right and it's about an important safety issue -- then the article probably isn't going to be good at convincing anyone who came in already believing otherwise. The article will just be cheerleading and a pat on the back for people that believed the article's point to begin with. (Sometimes that's useful to energize people who already believed the article's point, but in that case people should be clear that's the point of the article, and not delude themselves into thinking the article is something they can send to people to win them over.)
I'm having trouble seeing how anything you said in this comment is relevant to anything I wrote in mine. So much so I am tempted to ask if you accidentally replied to the wrong person.
Among other things, I never "wrote off the entire concept of politeness", the article I was talking about didn't include a ton of expletives, I never commented on how convincing or not the article was and I don't remember the article itself doing so either.
That's actually what made the comments on politeness, and reaching more people that way, even weirder in context (which is why they stuck with me, funny how that works).
"Tone policing" is a term made up by rude people in an attempt to excuse themselves for being rude. If someone in your group is yelling "fuck you" at another group, it's never going to help, and it's okay to point that out.
While the internet is full of garbage writing, I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act. Like learning a language, if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn.
And separately, being enlightened with novel pithy facts isn't the only reason people write things. There's a lot that can't be transmitted in that form, and while I appreciate that style of writing for startup advice or a how-to guide, it's definitely not universally applicable.
I think an otherwise interesting point is obscured by your construing of a strawman argument:
>I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act.
It is dubious to imply that the author is trying to police what people can say and consequently how they can act: he's explicitly talking about _essays_, a literary form typically used for advancing arguments. By reframing his argument as an attempt at "telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong," you're arguing against a much less interesting argument and sidestepping the central theme of _essays_ altogether.
In other words, I think the claim that good essays must not necessarilly show novelty, correctness, strength, and importance is a much more interesting argument, and, against correctness at least, one can probably find intellectual companionship among early 20th century futurists, dadaists, and later on fascists.
>... I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go.
I think you're putting words in his mouth. You seem to be reading it as "only write useful things" rather than "how to write usefully." You laid out a number of reasons that writing doesn't need to be useful to others, which is great, but doesn't contradict the essay how you seem to think it does.
" if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn"
If you're afraid to say your idea because you know (or suspect) that it's wrong, then you have already learned the hardest part of the lesson. Of course, it still remains to find out what the right idea is, but voicing one that you know to be wrong is hardly going to help with that.
Robert Morris's solution is wrong for most of us about casual conversation because it's valuable to be wrong sometimes. But in terms of deciding which essays you publish it seems quite valuable. Out of all the media I produce from conversation, to video, to casual writing, to essays, essays are the ones I least want to be wrong in. Also, the process of refining an idea is a valid one. Barring topics on which you are an ideologue, seldom are you so wrong about an idea that you think it's perfectly correct and nothing bothers you or makes you question it through many edits.
Hitting the ball wrong in tennis can be answered by the high school kid with one technique, and by Novak Djokovic with another technique. Novak will have a far more complete, in depth and transcendent answer than someone else, but both are "correct" in that they solve the problem of hitting the ball wrong.
Knowing you're wrong is the threshold guardian to the adventure of hitting the mark correctly. I don't know how you embark on that journey without voicing it multiple times to multiple people.
Writing is hard. for many people, writing anything at all is a struggle. That struggle also can go away with practice. Eventually you get to the point where expressing yourself with the written word becomes very natural.
Of the criteria that Paul suggested (true, important, novel, clear) I would say that novice writers should strive to write with just one of those qualities (which can vary from one piece of writing to another).
As you achieve fluency and words just flow from the pen (or keyboard) and the focus shifts away from being able to express yourself, you add the other criteria to improve the quality of the ideas you express.
"I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go."
The problem is far too many people err in the opposite direction. I don't see an Internet only consisting of perfectly reasoned and argued content, with everyone else fearfully staying quiet. I see countless comments suggesting the writer didn't take a second to consider contrary viewpoints, or facts that might undermine their argument, or stating things with certainty without regard to whether or not they have a factual basis.
It's the sort of advice you get from either a worrier or someone who has already perfected their craft.
And in an era where people talk a lot about how others achieve something and then 'close the door behind them', well, this is closing the door behind you, Paul.
This reminds me of the saying "don't speak unless you can improve upon the silence" (apparently attributed to many sources, but most commonly Jorge Luis Borges). The world would certainly be less noisy if we all followed that one.
I've always found this idea helpful when anxious or unsure of myself in social situations. A lot of the nervousness comes from the pressure to "say the right thing" and make a good impression, but that very pressure tends to ensure that I won't say anything of value (often quite to the contrary!), so I'm better off keeping my mouth shut, or speaking very little, until I relax and start thinking of truly 'useful' things to say naturally. And if it doesn't happen, that's ok--I'm fine with being the quiet guy.
It can be applied in many other areas as well. It's amazing how much you can usually improve a visual design, a piece of writing, or probably any other creative work just by repeatedly going through and removing or revising anything that you have even the slightest doubt about.
> "don't speak unless you can improve upon the silence"
Sounds like one of those things that is meant to keep people in their place and/or make them feel less worthy or as a put down.
> A lot of the nervousness comes from the pressure to "say the right thing"
I can tell from your bio you are much younger than I am so I will offer this advice to you as 'an older guy' (note I did not say 'dude' either). Not only will you care less about that when you get older but you will find that people very generally will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned about what comes out of your mouth (within reason of course and depending on the precise circumstances meaning sure there are cases where you don't want to just say or do anything).
people very generally will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned about what comes out of your mouth
32yo here. In my experience, the opposite seems to be true. (I've been dragged to that conclusion despite wanting to believe otherwise.)
More precisely, it might be true that people will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned with what comes out of your mouth. But the climate in 2020 is night-and-day difference from 2009-era. I think the shift was so subtle that we might not have noticed.
It's true that as one gets older, one generally cares less about such things though. It was just an interesting and surprising change. Five or so years ago, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you.
“Sounds like one of those things that is meant to keep people in their place and/or make them feel less worthy or as a put down.”
I suppose it could be used that way, but I think of it more as something people should apply to themselves, not as a judgment against others. What “improves the silence” is obviously subjective and reasonable people will disagree about what does or doesn’t, but I imagine most of us have experienced the feeling that we should say something despite not really having anything to say in that particular moment. My point is just that it can be liberating to ignore that impulse to speak for the sake of speaking and wait until you have something you really want to say.
“ I can tell from your bio you are much younger than I am so I will offer this advice to you as 'an older guy' (note I did not say 'dude' either). Not only will you care less about that when you get older but you will find that people very generally will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned about what comes out of your mouth (within reason of course and depending on the precise circumstances meaning sure there are cases where you don't want to just say or do anything).”
I’m pretty old in internet years (34) and definitely care less what anyone thinks than I used to. And from what I can tell, a lot less that the average person. But I think almost everyone cares about approval to some extent and can feel uncomfortable socially if they go outside their comfort zone. So while I agree that people are of course attracted to confidence, sometimes you just don’t feel it, no matter who you are, and that’s fine. Trying to force it tends to be counterproductive.
The feeling I am left with after reading the essay is that the author is more interested in being right in an "I've won the debate" kind of way, than he is interested in being useful. And that the author admires his own writing.
The most useful writing shows more of a willingness to be vulnerable and to share the human condition. As opposed to reaching for a filter that makes one always correct, motivated by "a horror of saying anything dumb". Ironically, a detailed essay around that horror - so strong it often silences you - might contain more useful truths than this essay.
And useful essays are not limited to the novel ideas the author focuses on. Considering the author's background, it's predictable but also understandable to see a focus on novel ideas. But that's an unnecessarily restrictive focus. The art of writing essays has already demonstrated much wider possibilities.
That's not to say the simplistic formula the author gives won't improve your writing. It's reasonable to briefly consider. Just that it has limitations, and a peculiar and very specific motivation when compared to writing that is more useful and lasting. So also consider less flex, less patting one's self on the back, and perhaps even saying something dumb. If you want inspiration, two concrete examples off the top of my head are David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers.
My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Over time I found this unwieldy and now I find myself re-reading my sentences to see what I can delete.
It's satisfying, like deleting unused code in a messy codebase. I envy writers who manage to densely pack information in sentences that are beautiful to read.
I experienced the same thing with English teachers. But I had a friend point out that Hemingway (whom we both adored) wrote sentences that were 7 words shorter than normal. Writing short punchy sentences without a single spare word.
Steinbeck wrote that way and so did Elmore Leonard. Leonard said he'd get down a first draft and then go back a second time taking words out that weren't necessary.
One can idolize Hemingway to a fault. Removing the unnecessary is largely what a second draft is for, no matter who's doing the work; concision is a virtue, but to pursue concision above all else risks erring into insufficiency and rendering oneself unable to write in one's own style and voice, rather than in an emulation of someone else's.
Voice elevates an informative essay from a dry recitation of facts, offering the reader little of genuine interest, into a conversation in which the reader is able and welcome to participate. Voice also offers interest of its own, which can help sustain a reader through what might otherwise prove intolerable complexities or difficulties in the subject matter of the work.
You may, of course, consider this, and consider the virtues of the Hemingwayesque ultimacy of concision, and decide that the latter outweigh the former. I don't agree, but we all ideally write in our own ways. I would, though, ask that you do consider those virtues - and their contrary vices - rather than partake of the blind veneration of Hemingway so common among the rather dim luminaries of modern literature.
Essayists may believe that what they're writing is true, but they're not best placed to judge that. Truth requires objective testing and replication, and essays aren't the right tool for that.
So it's useful to remember that the point of an essay is persuasion, not truth.
Short sentences and clear points are more persuasive even if they're nonsense.
The longer your sentences, the more you'll filter out readers with short attentions spans and limited literacy.
Which is why terse novels about dramatic situations sell better than florid novels with academic subtexts.
It's also why political campaigns like to reduce slogans to soundbites.
packing a lot into sentences is entirely different from writing short sentences. for instance, pynchon packs a ton into his sentences, yet they're long and winding at the same time (confusingly so, sometimes).
hemingway's sentences are just short, like playing every note in staccato, which in itself can become tiring (i like, but don't love, hemingway).
> My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing.
Same here, and I suspect the same for most people: "due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature" --- http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html Toward the end of high school I found The Elements of Style by accident and it changed my life. Yes, it changed my life!
I was always more interested in art than science. So I didn't become a programmer until I was almost 30. What struck me was how similar it was to prose.
1. There are many ways to write a program
2. Your first draft of a program is usually bad, but you can steadily improve it by rewriting it over and over and over. This unglamourous technique is the secret behind good prose too, as Graham points out.
3. As you rewrite it, you find you can do the same thing in half the space.
4. The programs that are most pleasant to use are ones where the programmer first wrote it for himself. Likewise, as Graham said here, a good strategy for useful essays is to write it first for yourself.
Interestingly, I find that the set of Lisp programmers also contains many of the best writers about programming: Norvig, Graham, Stallman, McCarthy, Steele, Abelson, Sussman, etc.
This is how I do it as well. I usually find inspiration that makes my code much better. My secret sauce is telling others I am debugging it instead of making a new draft. This keeps someone from insisting that my first draft is "good enough."
In addition, I design my programs such that I can confidently rewrite important sections. This is OOP encapsulation's main purpose. In practice, everyone writes getters and setters until every object is an ugly struct.
Professionally this was described to me as:
1. you write like a salesperson
2. you write like a scientist
It's hard to please everyone. The vast majority of writing tilts in one direction or another. Very few writers (in any setting) strike the right balance. Very few readers take off their own lenses to attempt to understand the writer's angle.
One tool I like using: Grammarly. It's not fool-proof by any means. But it helps point out verbosity and write more clearly by helping me learn when my writing isn't as clear as it can be.
They're English teachers, they view language through the lens of literature. If you read Faulkner, you'll find extremely long and verbose sentences. If you read Hemingway or McCarthy, you'll find much more economic and sparing use of words.
The problem is outside of literature, readers want knowledge, not pretty language. I think many teachers lead their students astray, as the vast majority of us write for knowledge and not for prettiness.
I experienced this too. I'm trying my best to unlearn it because I'm writing a novel. I'm not so adept with flowery prose as to write literary fiction, so I want to have more practical sentences that have better pacing.
While the Internet provides a platform for Essays, as he says, I think maybe a bigger point is it allowing the rise of 'Video Essays'.
Where now content creators are turning out 30+ minute videos on a single subject. While in the past it used to be more 'dry' things like History and the like it seems more mainstream subjects are being covered. Movies, cars, current social issues, etc.
And just how much you actually get from them. They're often spoken from positions of authority on a subject. And slick editing and video may reinforce their credibility to the viewer. But often they just feel like empty stitched together wikipedia clippings with nice effects and humor sprinkled in to keep the viewer interested.
Compared to crafting words and language like this Author tried to convey, you just rely on balance between entertainment & information.
A very small portion of video's are video essays even if content creators are turning out 30m on a single topic. The organization and structure of the argument is completely different. Usually the goal of videos are primarily entertainment and occasionally a secondary goal of being informative. Usually the goal of an essay is primarily being informative with an occasional secondary goal of being entertaining.
Niven's First Law of Writing: Writers who write for other writers should write letters. - Larry Niven, science fiction author (1989)
Blind monkey at the typewriter. - Robert Burnham Jr., Astronomer (1983)
We'll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality. - Ursula K. Le Guin
The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do. - Donald Barthelme
There can be no reliable biography of a writer, 'because a writer is too many people if he is any good'. - Andrew O'Hagan
Summary of advice from writers: Advice from writers is useful, and not only about naming. Writers have been at it for centuries; programming is merely decades old. Also, their advice is better written. And funnier. - Peter Hilton
(Edit: One of PG's main points here is succinctly summarized by this other pithy taoup quote: Lest men suspect your tale untrue, keep probability in view. - John Gay (1727))
The article, nominally on 'good (essay format) writing', was an example of #1. We here illustrate #2 wonderfully (a quip on both communicative fallacy and the human condition). #3 is aspirational, but also puts purely functional writing (without art) in its place. #4 concerns perhaps pathfinding as purpose, in creative intellectual work. #5 suggests monodimensionality as a defining quality of poor writers. #6 ties all of the above in its application to programming.
As a counterpoint, I'd argue that the "mathematical" approach to good writing is inherently flawed. That is, trying to arrive at the formula for the "best" essay via dialectic (argument) is to miss the forest for the trees. Writing is an art, not a science. Formal logic was developed to display arguments, so if you are trying to be as precise and mathematical as possible, use that instead.
Instead, I'd suggest reading the great writers of the past and present (but focus more on the past). Study what works, what speaks to you, what stylistic approach you favor, and so on. As a bonus, you'll learn more about what has been said by other intelligent people and subsequently avoid writing over-confident, ill-informed essays...
If you're looking for stellar examples of essay-writing, I personally recommend Jorge Luis Borges and David Foster Wallace. Both manage to write in a manner both erudite and coherent, without seeming too florid or too simplistic. Here are a few samples:
I think the fallacy is in the premise: "An essay should be useful."
Well, useful is always in the eye of the beholder. There is no such thing as an absolute truth, after all. And pretending there is, and it's even attainable, is intellectually dishonest.
Sure, an essay could be a formal piece that approaches an almost "mathematical" approach. After all, an essay a first and foremost an argument presented by the author. Even a flawed argument is still an argument. And a flawed essay is still an essay.
The fallacy here is being implicitly reductionist. If your premise states "an essay should be useful" then you're basically reducing the definition of what an essay is to a formal argument based on logic and falsifiable facts, and rejecting any other text as "not an essay" or, worse, "not useful" - whatever that might mean - or, worse, "nonsenses" or "a dumb thing to say".
A quick glance on Wikipedia dispenses such reductionism rather swiftly:
Not-withstanding, I think PG's essay does contain some excellent personal advice on writing style and technique itself. No more, no less. His sin is confounding form and function. The former always follows the latter, never the inverse.
> There is no such thing as an absolute truth, after all.
In a relative sense, it's true that there's no such thing as an absolute truth, but it's also true that there is such a thing as an absolute truth. However, in an absolute sense — the sense in which, for example, real-number multiplication is commutative — it is only true that there is such a thing as an absolute truth, and the assertion that "there's no such thing as an absolute truth" is simply an error of reasoning.
> And pretending there is, and it's even attainable, is intellectually dishonest.
No. You know what's intellectually dishonest? Asserting that your viewpoint is so obviously correct that nobody could possibly disagree with it sincerely, and that if they claim to disagree, they are simply being dishonest.
Given the self-referential and self-refuting nature of your comment, I'm guessing that it's merely an elaborate joke, intended to expose the moral relativism it ostensibly espouses to ridicule.
Generally, I agree with what you are saying about essays and stating that "they should be useful."
But I was surprised by your comments about truth:
> There is no such thing as an absolute truth, after all. And pretending there is, and it's even attainable, is intellectually dishonest.
Could you expand on what you mean by "an absolute truth?"
I may be misunderstanding you, but I suspect you mean that we can never know anything with absolute certainty. For example, it may _seem_ that I typing on a keyboard, but in actual fact, I am dreaming.
In this example, there _is_ an absolute truth. I am typing on my keyboard, or I am not. But that truth is not knowable without any doubt.
If we use "truth" as high as knowing without any possible doubt, then nothing is "true." Thus, the word true is useless during everyday communication. For this reason I don't think it is appropriate to qualify everything we say with, "we don't know with absolute certainty this is true, but here is my best guess." Rather, we just say it is true.
I like David Foster Wallace as a writer and he’s as much an authority as anyone when it comes to writing well, but I think there’s a pretty major difference in terms of goals and priorities. PG is writing about writing as a means of processing ideas. He’s taking the perspective of a structural engineer, not an architect. While Wallace wrote beautifully, PG is writing about writing usefully, even if that writing is bare and unornamented. And while that may not be your preferred style, I wouldn’t dismiss it as something that someone would want to do.
Writing fiction may be an art, but writing nonfiction is a craft. And essays are nonfiction.
The creator of art seeks somehow to offer fresh insight, often employing some form of novelty, be it technique, medium, context, perspective, etc.
Craft, however, isn't about novelty; it's about engineering a clear convincing message effectively, efficiently, and ideally... memorably and with elan.
I admit the line between art and craft is often blurry (probably because the craftsman has taken too much artistic license). Unlike art, the techniques employed in an essay should never impede its purpose. There, it's only the message that matters, not the medium.
I'm not sure I quite share your view of what art aims to do. Iris Murdoch had a line that tyrants fear art because art forces them to confront the truth.
If one believes, as Murdoch suggests, that art aims to express a truth as clearly as possible then the qualities of good technical writing and good fiction are entirely compatible. I'd suggest the distinction lies more in the extent to which the sensibilities of the author are present in the writing.
>Unlike art, the techniques employed in an essay should never impede its purpose. There, it's only the message that matters, not the medium.
On the other hand, it's very possible for the techniques employed to work in service of its purpose. Many of Adorno's essays are arguing for a point of view both aesthetically, in form, and argumentatively, in content.
But since you mentioned Borges let me offer a counter-counterpoint: Borges was obsessive about his writings and can be considered "mathematical" about them. He chopped away anything that didn't fit and was very careful about the construction of sentences. He was so obsessed that he recalled -- or so I read somewhere -- something that was already printed in order to make corrections to it.
Poe claimed he was quite "mathematical" (or maybe the word is "methodical", or "analytical") about the construction of his famous poem The Raven. While this claim is disputed, or maybe he exaggerated, at least it's something he liked to claim about some of his work.
Sorry if I was unclear. By “mathematical” I meant looking for an underlying rule, a universal applicable to all particulars - which is essentially what the original essay is looking for.
Borges absolutely was extremely specific and analytical, but that’s not what I meant.
there is a difference between a literary essay and the kind PG is talking about here. PG's essays are more like maybe business commentary than literary essays. Some of these insights apply anyway, to all essays - but don't confuse different types of essays.
Readit News
Someone was telling the author that he would achieve more if he phrased his point in a more "polite" way, just because the certainty of the writing made the critic mad. Thankfully, the author was here in the comments responding, and he didn't budge.
That interaction was very refreshing for that very reason: The author was right, knew he was right, someone didn't like that the author knew he was right, but the author remained steadfast.
There is a very serious problem in any privacy/security discussion right now where, like it or not, the average person is poking their head in and wanting to learn more. There's a wealth of misinformation and paranoia strewn all over, and a tone like this is needlessly rude and condescending... which doesn't help provide a place where people can learn.
His entire point is that people ("technologists") need to stop recommending encrypted email, but the tone with which the article is written will drive away anybody who's actually recommending it. It's (IMO) effectively shouting into the void.
People seem to have this idea that I'm personally offended by what he wrote, when I couldn't care less (as I don't LARP, myself) - I genuinely (usually) like reading stuff from him, whether it's comments on here or elsewhere. ;P
I. e. the willingness to entertain the best argument against your position in good faith. Two people who are excellent in doing so (and familiar to HN) would be Scott Alexander of slatestarcodex, and Matt Levine at Bloomberg.
(Someone rather bad at it, usually arguing against some caricature of what he imagines his opposition to be, and generally tending towards the "either unactionable, obvious, or wrong" end of the spectrum is, well, Paul Graham.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...
A clear and even-keeled accommodating of an argument - one very discordant from your own argument - is a rare find these days. People feign even-handedness but what seems a fair shake to them doesnt to others who happen to sit a little further, in the spectrum of opinions.
I want to see if Matt measures up.
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Among other things, I never "wrote off the entire concept of politeness", the article I was talking about didn't include a ton of expletives, I never commented on how convincing or not the article was and I don't remember the article itself doing so either.
That's actually what made the comments on politeness, and reaching more people that way, even weirder in context (which is why they stuck with me, funny how that works).
https://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977
And separately, being enlightened with novel pithy facts isn't the only reason people write things. There's a lot that can't be transmitted in that form, and while I appreciate that style of writing for startup advice or a how-to guide, it's definitely not universally applicable.
>I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act.
It is dubious to imply that the author is trying to police what people can say and consequently how they can act: he's explicitly talking about _essays_, a literary form typically used for advancing arguments. By reframing his argument as an attempt at "telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong," you're arguing against a much less interesting argument and sidestepping the central theme of _essays_ altogether.
In other words, I think the claim that good essays must not necessarilly show novelty, correctness, strength, and importance is a much more interesting argument, and, against correctness at least, one can probably find intellectual companionship among early 20th century futurists, dadaists, and later on fascists.
Also ironic how this is the top-voted comment on an essay that, itself, spends so much time talking about the inevitability of misrepresentation.
I could write an essay on that myself.
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I think you're putting words in his mouth. You seem to be reading it as "only write useful things" rather than "how to write usefully." You laid out a number of reasons that writing doesn't need to be useful to others, which is great, but doesn't contradict the essay how you seem to think it does.
If you're afraid to say your idea because you know (or suspect) that it's wrong, then you have already learned the hardest part of the lesson. Of course, it still remains to find out what the right idea is, but voicing one that you know to be wrong is hardly going to help with that.
Knowing you're wrong is the threshold guardian to the adventure of hitting the mark correctly. I don't know how you embark on that journey without voicing it multiple times to multiple people.
Of the criteria that Paul suggested (true, important, novel, clear) I would say that novice writers should strive to write with just one of those qualities (which can vary from one piece of writing to another).
As you achieve fluency and words just flow from the pen (or keyboard) and the focus shifts away from being able to express yourself, you add the other criteria to improve the quality of the ideas you express.
The problem is far too many people err in the opposite direction. I don't see an Internet only consisting of perfectly reasoned and argued content, with everyone else fearfully staying quiet. I see countless comments suggesting the writer didn't take a second to consider contrary viewpoints, or facts that might undermine their argument, or stating things with certainty without regard to whether or not they have a factual basis.
And in an era where people talk a lot about how others achieve something and then 'close the door behind them', well, this is closing the door behind you, Paul.
I've always found this idea helpful when anxious or unsure of myself in social situations. A lot of the nervousness comes from the pressure to "say the right thing" and make a good impression, but that very pressure tends to ensure that I won't say anything of value (often quite to the contrary!), so I'm better off keeping my mouth shut, or speaking very little, until I relax and start thinking of truly 'useful' things to say naturally. And if it doesn't happen, that's ok--I'm fine with being the quiet guy.
It can be applied in many other areas as well. It's amazing how much you can usually improve a visual design, a piece of writing, or probably any other creative work just by repeatedly going through and removing or revising anything that you have even the slightest doubt about.
Sounds like one of those things that is meant to keep people in their place and/or make them feel less worthy or as a put down.
> A lot of the nervousness comes from the pressure to "say the right thing"
I can tell from your bio you are much younger than I am so I will offer this advice to you as 'an older guy' (note I did not say 'dude' either). Not only will you care less about that when you get older but you will find that people very generally will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned about what comes out of your mouth (within reason of course and depending on the precise circumstances meaning sure there are cases where you don't want to just say or do anything).
32yo here. In my experience, the opposite seems to be true. (I've been dragged to that conclusion despite wanting to believe otherwise.)
More precisely, it might be true that people will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned with what comes out of your mouth. But the climate in 2020 is night-and-day difference from 2009-era. I think the shift was so subtle that we might not have noticed.
It's true that as one gets older, one generally cares less about such things though. It was just an interesting and surprising change. Five or so years ago, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you.
I suppose it could be used that way, but I think of it more as something people should apply to themselves, not as a judgment against others. What “improves the silence” is obviously subjective and reasonable people will disagree about what does or doesn’t, but I imagine most of us have experienced the feeling that we should say something despite not really having anything to say in that particular moment. My point is just that it can be liberating to ignore that impulse to speak for the sake of speaking and wait until you have something you really want to say.
“ I can tell from your bio you are much younger than I am so I will offer this advice to you as 'an older guy' (note I did not say 'dude' either). Not only will you care less about that when you get older but you will find that people very generally will be drawn to you more if you don't appear to be concerned about what comes out of your mouth (within reason of course and depending on the precise circumstances meaning sure there are cases where you don't want to just say or do anything).”
I’m pretty old in internet years (34) and definitely care less what anyone thinks than I used to. And from what I can tell, a lot less that the average person. But I think almost everyone cares about approval to some extent and can feel uncomfortable socially if they go outside their comfort zone. So while I agree that people are of course attracted to confidence, sometimes you just don’t feel it, no matter who you are, and that’s fine. Trying to force it tends to be counterproductive.
The most useful writing shows more of a willingness to be vulnerable and to share the human condition. As opposed to reaching for a filter that makes one always correct, motivated by "a horror of saying anything dumb". Ironically, a detailed essay around that horror - so strong it often silences you - might contain more useful truths than this essay.
And useful essays are not limited to the novel ideas the author focuses on. Considering the author's background, it's predictable but also understandable to see a focus on novel ideas. But that's an unnecessarily restrictive focus. The art of writing essays has already demonstrated much wider possibilities.
That's not to say the simplistic formula the author gives won't improve your writing. It's reasonable to briefly consider. Just that it has limitations, and a peculiar and very specific motivation when compared to writing that is more useful and lasting. So also consider less flex, less patting one's self on the back, and perhaps even saying something dumb. If you want inspiration, two concrete examples off the top of my head are David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers.
It's satisfying, like deleting unused code in a messy codebase. I envy writers who manage to densely pack information in sentences that are beautiful to read.
Steinbeck wrote that way and so did Elmore Leonard. Leonard said he'd get down a first draft and then go back a second time taking words out that weren't necessary.
https://www.litcharts.com/blog/analitics/what-makes-hemingwa...
Voice elevates an informative essay from a dry recitation of facts, offering the reader little of genuine interest, into a conversation in which the reader is able and welcome to participate. Voice also offers interest of its own, which can help sustain a reader through what might otherwise prove intolerable complexities or difficulties in the subject matter of the work.
You may, of course, consider this, and consider the virtues of the Hemingwayesque ultimacy of concision, and decide that the latter outweigh the former. I don't agree, but we all ideally write in our own ways. I would, though, ask that you do consider those virtues - and their contrary vices - rather than partake of the blind veneration of Hemingway so common among the rather dim luminaries of modern literature.
So it's useful to remember that the point of an essay is persuasion, not truth.
Short sentences and clear points are more persuasive even if they're nonsense.
The longer your sentences, the more you'll filter out readers with short attentions spans and limited literacy.
Which is why terse novels about dramatic situations sell better than florid novels with academic subtexts.
It's also why political campaigns like to reduce slogans to soundbites.
hemingway's sentences are just short, like playing every note in staccato, which in itself can become tiring (i like, but don't love, hemingway).
Same here, and I suspect the same for most people: "due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature" --- http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html Toward the end of high school I found The Elements of Style by accident and it changed my life. Yes, it changed my life!
I was always more interested in art than science. So I didn't become a programmer until I was almost 30. What struck me was how similar it was to prose.
1. There are many ways to write a program
2. Your first draft of a program is usually bad, but you can steadily improve it by rewriting it over and over and over. This unglamourous technique is the secret behind good prose too, as Graham points out.
3. As you rewrite it, you find you can do the same thing in half the space.
4. The programs that are most pleasant to use are ones where the programmer first wrote it for himself. Likewise, as Graham said here, a good strategy for useful essays is to write it first for yourself.
https://norvig.com/sudoku.html
This is my all time favorite programming book, both for the prose and the code within it:
https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp
Interestingly, I find that the set of Lisp programmers also contains many of the best writers about programming: Norvig, Graham, Stallman, McCarthy, Steele, Abelson, Sussman, etc.
In addition, I design my programs such that I can confidently rewrite important sections. This is OOP encapsulation's main purpose. In practice, everyone writes getters and setters until every object is an ugly struct.
It's hard to please everyone. The vast majority of writing tilts in one direction or another. Very few writers (in any setting) strike the right balance. Very few readers take off their own lenses to attempt to understand the writer's angle.
One tool I like using: Grammarly. It's not fool-proof by any means. But it helps point out verbosity and write more clearly by helping me learn when my writing isn't as clear as it can be.
> Yes.
The problem is outside of literature, readers want knowledge, not pretty language. I think many teachers lead their students astray, as the vast majority of us write for knowledge and not for prettiness.
Like Mark Twain once said "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."
No he didn’t. It was Blaise Pascal:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
Where now content creators are turning out 30+ minute videos on a single subject. While in the past it used to be more 'dry' things like History and the like it seems more mainstream subjects are being covered. Movies, cars, current social issues, etc.
And just how much you actually get from them. They're often spoken from positions of authority on a subject. And slick editing and video may reinforce their credibility to the viewer. But often they just feel like empty stitched together wikipedia clippings with nice effects and humor sprinkled in to keep the viewer interested.
Compared to crafting words and language like this Author tried to convey, you just rely on balance between entertainment & information.
Blind monkey at the typewriter. - Robert Burnham Jr., Astronomer (1983)
We'll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality. - Ursula K. Le Guin
The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do. - Donald Barthelme
There can be no reliable biography of a writer, 'because a writer is too many people if he is any good'. - Andrew O'Hagan
Summary of advice from writers: Advice from writers is useful, and not only about naming. Writers have been at it for centuries; programming is merely decades old. Also, their advice is better written. And funnier. - Peter Hilton
... from https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
(Edit: One of PG's main points here is succinctly summarized by this other pithy taoup quote: Lest men suspect your tale untrue, keep probability in view. - John Gay (1727))
I don't think I got your point with this selection of quotes, if you don't mind explaining.
Instead, I'd suggest reading the great writers of the past and present (but focus more on the past). Study what works, what speaks to you, what stylistic approach you favor, and so on. As a bonus, you'll learn more about what has been said by other intelligent people and subsequently avoid writing over-confident, ill-informed essays...
If you're looking for stellar examples of essay-writing, I personally recommend Jorge Luis Borges and David Foster Wallace. Both manage to write in a manner both erudite and coherent, without seeming too florid or too simplistic. Here are a few samples:
- A New Refutation of Time, Borges: https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1947-borges-anewrefutation...
- The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, Borges: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.htm...
- David Lynch and Lost Highway, Wallace: http://www.lynchnet.com/lh/lhpremiere.html
- Laughing with Kafka, Wallace: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-...
- Consider the Lobster, Wallace: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
Edit: added some more essay links.
Well, useful is always in the eye of the beholder. There is no such thing as an absolute truth, after all. And pretending there is, and it's even attainable, is intellectually dishonest.
Sure, an essay could be a formal piece that approaches an almost "mathematical" approach. After all, an essay a first and foremost an argument presented by the author. Even a flawed argument is still an argument. And a flawed essay is still an essay.
The fallacy here is being implicitly reductionist. If your premise states "an essay should be useful" then you're basically reducing the definition of what an essay is to a formal argument based on logic and falsifiable facts, and rejecting any other text as "not an essay" or, worse, "not useful" - whatever that might mean - or, worse, "nonsenses" or "a dumb thing to say".
A quick glance on Wikipedia dispenses such reductionism rather swiftly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay
Not-withstanding, I think PG's essay does contain some excellent personal advice on writing style and technique itself. No more, no less. His sin is confounding form and function. The former always follows the latter, never the inverse.
In a relative sense, it's true that there's no such thing as an absolute truth, but it's also true that there is such a thing as an absolute truth. However, in an absolute sense — the sense in which, for example, real-number multiplication is commutative — it is only true that there is such a thing as an absolute truth, and the assertion that "there's no such thing as an absolute truth" is simply an error of reasoning.
> And pretending there is, and it's even attainable, is intellectually dishonest.
No. You know what's intellectually dishonest? Asserting that your viewpoint is so obviously correct that nobody could possibly disagree with it sincerely, and that if they claim to disagree, they are simply being dishonest.
Given the self-referential and self-refuting nature of your comment, I'm guessing that it's merely an elaborate joke, intended to expose the moral relativism it ostensibly espouses to ridicule.
But I was surprised by your comments about truth:
> There is no such thing as an absolute truth, after all. And pretending there is, and it's even attainable, is intellectually dishonest.
Could you expand on what you mean by "an absolute truth?"
I may be misunderstanding you, but I suspect you mean that we can never know anything with absolute certainty. For example, it may _seem_ that I typing on a keyboard, but in actual fact, I am dreaming.
In this example, there _is_ an absolute truth. I am typing on my keyboard, or I am not. But that truth is not knowable without any doubt.
If we use "truth" as high as knowing without any possible doubt, then nothing is "true." Thus, the word true is useless during everyday communication. For this reason I don't think it is appropriate to qualify everything we say with, "we don't know with absolute certainty this is true, but here is my best guess." Rather, we just say it is true.
You seem to be stating this as an absolute truth.
Beautiful writing is useful.
Writing fiction may be an art, but writing nonfiction is a craft. And essays are nonfiction.
The creator of art seeks somehow to offer fresh insight, often employing some form of novelty, be it technique, medium, context, perspective, etc.
Craft, however, isn't about novelty; it's about engineering a clear convincing message effectively, efficiently, and ideally... memorably and with elan.
I admit the line between art and craft is often blurry (probably because the craftsman has taken too much artistic license). Unlike art, the techniques employed in an essay should never impede its purpose. There, it's only the message that matters, not the medium.
If one believes, as Murdoch suggests, that art aims to express a truth as clearly as possible then the qualities of good technical writing and good fiction are entirely compatible. I'd suggest the distinction lies more in the extent to which the sensibilities of the author are present in the writing.
For instance, Vonnegut's guidelines on good writing (summarised here: https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/14/how-to-write-with-s...) could equally be applied to technical writing as fiction, I think.
On the other hand, it's very possible for the techniques employed to work in service of its purpose. Many of Adorno's essays are arguing for a point of view both aesthetically, in form, and argumentatively, in content.
I agree with this, but avoiding writing nonsense is science, and not art. So there definitely is a scientific aspect to writing.
But since you mentioned Borges let me offer a counter-counterpoint: Borges was obsessive about his writings and can be considered "mathematical" about them. He chopped away anything that didn't fit and was very careful about the construction of sentences. He was so obsessed that he recalled -- or so I read somewhere -- something that was already printed in order to make corrections to it.
Poe claimed he was quite "mathematical" (or maybe the word is "methodical", or "analytical") about the construction of his famous poem The Raven. While this claim is disputed, or maybe he exaggerated, at least it's something he liked to claim about some of his work.
Borges absolutely was extremely specific and analytical, but that’s not what I meant.