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How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Write Usefully

#121

Post by timerol »

Traster wrote: post #26

>How can you ensure that the things you say are true and novel and important? Believe it or not, there is a trick for doing this. I learned it from my friend Robert Morris, who has a horror of saying anything dumb. His trick is not to say anything unless he's sure it's worth hearing. This makes it hard to get opinions out of him, but when you do, they're usually right. How is this useful? How do I say things that are…

PG never justifies this, and just claims that "with essay writing, publication bias is the way to go." There are a huge number of essayists that I have the option to read. I would prefer to read each of their best thoughts, rather than read more of their thoughts.

In my life, Twitter is for hot takes, and Feedly is for deep thoughts.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#122

Post by tptacek »

philwelch wrote: post #103
kasey_junk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m certainly no grammarian or even much of a writer, but the Bible seems a particularly odd piece of writing to use as a guide. It’s been translated to the nth degree, is ancient & frequently obtuse on purpose...

Translations of the Bible, at least in historically Christian cultures, are usually treated as authoritative examples of proper written usage.

Where did you get this idea?

Re: How to Write Usefully

#123

Post by alexandercrohde »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #111
osdiab wrote: post #12

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,…

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 an…

Agree.

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.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#124

Post by Cartonju »

Writing an academic essay means fashioning a coherent set of ideas into an argument. Because essays are essentially linear—they offer one idea at a time—they must present their ideas in the order that makes most sense to a reader. Successfully structuring an essay means attending to a reader's logic.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#125

Post by injb »

osdiab wrote: post #12

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,…

" 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.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#127

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

injb wrote: post #112
say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #69

PG speaks of writing usefully while not writing well. Many of his sentences are phrases. The subject of his sentence is often unclear. He begins sentences with the preposition, "But". Yet, his writing remains useful. I'd rather the latter than the former if I had to choose, but considering the volume that he writes, it's surprising that he hasn't put effort into writing well. He just doesn't care to improve his work.

quote: "...with the preposition, "But". Yet, his writing..." The word "but" is a conjunction, like "yet". Oh, the ironing!

Good catch. The ironing was intentional.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#128

Post by luord »

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.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#129

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

osdiab wrote: post #12

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,…

>... 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.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#130

Post by webmaven »

Traster wrote: post #27
hooande wrote: post #4

The topic of useful writing is important. The ideas in this essay may not be surprising or unexpected, but the author does lay out a clear formula (importance + novelty + correctness + strength) that probably isn't obvious to most. It seems to be correct and the concrete list of usefulness criteria is strong. Everything seems to check out. The focus on correctness in this style of essay writing seems like a function…

The formula is wrong though. To provide a counter-example - Cunningham's Law >the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer. Sometimes saying something wrong, may actually be more useful. Either because you're clarifying a problem or making a connection or drawing a contrast or showing someone else the path by letting them see your chain of logic.

Ah, but useful to the writer, or the reader?
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