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How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Write Usefully

#281

Post by blowski »

wozniacki wrote: post #280
Uhhrrr wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Someone likened the cult of positivity, to a trend in Silicon Valley employers that emerged over the past decade or so. The trend of offering employees, unlimited & unrestricted vacation time. Some people argued - and I fully agree with them - that while on paper the offered vacation time is unlimited, what it really meant in action was that your vacation time was unlimited, * contingent on your readiness to accept a…

I don’t get how that’s related to the OP’s comment.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#282

Post by upofadown »

austhrow743 wrote: post #273
upofadown wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a straightforward observation that the writer of the original article was being pointlessly condescending and that they were alienating the people they were ostensibly trying to help. In general, personally attacking your audience is not an effective writing technique.

Disagree with pointless. I'm just some guy but I've noticed encrypted email booming in popularity the last few years. Seems like every second nerd I know uses proton now. Assuming these guys have been fighting the good fight the whole time, I can see why a hail mary switch in tone could be warranted. They're losing. Just staying the path and being agreeable and conciliatory would be what is pointless.

Even if there actually was some sort of ongoing email encryption crisis the snark was still pointless. That is not how you convince anyone of anything. That just expresses your anger.

In general, encrypting email is a good thing in the same way enabling TLS is a good thing. One can quibble about the details, but it is absurd and harmful to suggest it should not be done at all. So the snark seemed fairly unreasonable in this article as it doesn't addressing the root issue.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#283

Post by [deleted] »

upofadown wrote: post #282
austhrow743 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree with pointless. I'm just some guy but I've noticed encrypted email booming in popularity the last few years. Seems like every second nerd I know uses proton now. Assuming these guys have been fighting the good fight the whole time, I can see why a hail mary switch in tone could be warranted. They're losing. Just staying the path and being agreeable and conciliatory would be what is pointless.

Even if there actually was some sort of ongoing email encryption crisis the snark was still pointless. That is not how you convince anyone of anything. That just expresses your anger. In general, encrypting email is a good thing in the same way enabling TLS is a good thing. One can quibble about the details, but it is absurd and harmful to suggest it should not be done at all. So the snark seemed fairly unreasonable…

[deleted]

Re: How to Write Usefully

#284

Post by tchaffee »

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.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#285

Post by wozniacki »

blowski wrote: post #281
wozniacki wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone likened the cult of positivity, to a trend in Silicon Valley employers that emerged over the past decade or so. The trend of offering employees, unlimited & unrestricted vacation time. Some people argued - and I fully agree with them - that while on paper the offered vacation time is unlimited, what it really meant in action was that your vacation time was unlimited, * contingent on your readiness to accept a…

I don’t get how that’s related to the OP’s comment.

The grand OP referred to concept of "cult of positivity."

  Policing tone is passive aggressive censorship & bias. 
  It's as hideous a concept as 'culture appropriation' or
  the cult of positivity.
It may have been voted down and dead at the time of your writing. Now its back alive.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#286

Post by vinliao »

lliamander wrote: post #249

Something I tend to see in online arguments, here and elsewhere, is the tendency to throw everything at the other person and see what sticks. I've been guilty of it myself. The result is a wall of text that few will read and will contain many points that are easy to knock down, poorly worded, or irrelevant. Now, I try to stick to one point, if possible, that I feel I can articulate well and defend.

This remind me of a quote: "if you're saying ten things, you're not saying anything."

Re: How to Write Usefully

#287

Post by tchaffee »

philwelch wrote: post #184
keiferski wrote: post #13

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 readin…

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 ba…

> While Wallace wrote beautifully

Beautiful writing is useful.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#288

Post by rossdavidh »

Oddly, coming from an author who has written so many essays which I find incredibly useful and interesting, this essay I found not especially useful, and not especially interesting.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#290

Post by grappler » 

    Ditto for correctness, importance, and strength.
    In effect the four components are like numbers you
    can multiply together to get a score for
    usefulness. Which I realize is almost awkwardly
    reductive, but nonetheless true.
Cue the page ripping scene from Dead Poets Society...

    PERRY: Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans
    Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand poetry, we
    must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and
    figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One,
    how artfully has the objective of the poem been 
    rendered, and two, how important is that objective. 
    Question one rates the poem's perfection, question
    two rates its importance. And once these questions
    have been answered, determining a poem's greatness
    becomes a relatively simple matter.
   
    Keating gets up from his desk and prepares to draw on
    the chalk board.
   
    PERRY: If the poem's score for perfection is
    plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its
    importance is plotted on the vertical, then
    calculating the total area of the poem yields the
    measure of its greatness.
   
    Keating draws a corresponding graph on the board and
    the students dutifully copy it down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjHORRHXtyI

:)

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