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The Best Essay

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Best Essay

#41

Post by plemer »

joshuamorton wrote: post #37
gizmo wrote: post #26

> Writing about the best essay implies there is such a thing, which pseudo-intellectuals will dismiss as reductive, though it follows necessarily from the possibility of one essay being better than another. What is the best car? Some cars are real stinkers. It's not hard to find cars that are better than Zastava Yugo in every way. For most cars you can find other cars that are in the same class, but just better. Clea…

Or formalized, a partial ordering over some set doesn't imply a total ordering or a maximum value.

Beautifully put

Re: The Best Essay

#42

Post by kashyapc »

tptacek wrote: post #34

"It probably wouldn't be about this year's lipstick colors." Why not? "Death of a Pig" didn't convey any new scientific ideas, and might not even have been surprising in any kind of intellectual way. You could title this piece "Great Essays" and it would be entirely defensible. But Graham gave himself a higher goal here, and I don't think he's really presented a recipe for writing the Best essay. Look what he's up ag…

Excellent point on "Death of a pig" by E.B White. It's the perfect example of a timeless essay, without a "big scientific idea".

For others unaware of it, that essay was written in 1948[1], go read it in full. It starts like this:

"I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting."

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240227003736/https://www.theat...

Re: The Best Essay

#43

Post by graycat »

pedalpete wrote: post #29

> The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery To a hammer, everything is a nail. I love technology and science, but that doesn't mean that is what makes the best essay. Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific - yes, I'm suggesting that social scien…

> I'm suggesting that social science isn't really a science.

In reality and practice, no effort at science is 100% "really a science".

But for "social science":

(1) It can be a goal to have some of social science be real science.

(2) My wife's Ph.D. was in social science, and her dissertation was real science. The work started with a real question, in social science, gathered some real data, analyzed the data statistically, and came to some real conclusions. The conclusions were "new, correct, and significant". Some science? Yup.

Re: The Best Essay

#44

Post by tptacek »

kashyapc wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #34

"It probably wouldn't be about this year's lipstick colors." Why not? "Death of a Pig" didn't convey any new scientific ideas, and might not even have been surprising in any kind of intellectual way. You could title this piece "Great Essays" and it would be entirely defensible. But Graham gave himself a higher goal here, and I don't think he's really presented a recipe for writing the Best essay. Look what he's up ag…

Excellent point on "Death of a pig" by E.B White. It's the perfect example of a timeless essay, without a "big scientific idea". For others unaware of it, that essay was written in 1948[1], go read it in full. It starts like this: "I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and th…

I want to be careful not to pummel a straw man, because it's sort of clear that Graham doesn't believe the Best essay must come from an exploration of science or of exciting new ideas (though most of the advice he gives is for that kind of essay). If I have a concern, I think it's about the chemistry his writing has with this community, how threads here will bleach it down to a game of prog-rock writing, trying to somehow outdo Darwin.

Re: The Best Essay

#45

Post by [deleted] »

pedalpete wrote: post #29

> The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery To a hammer, everything is a nail. I love technology and science, but that doesn't mean that is what makes the best essay. Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific - yes, I'm suggesting that social scien…

[deleted]

Re: The Best Essay

#46

Post by coldtea »

pedalpete wrote: post #29

> The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery To a hammer, everything is a nail. I love technology and science, but that doesn't mean that is what makes the best essay. Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific - yes, I'm suggesting that social scien…

>The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery

That sounds like a trekie concluding that the best literature is "Star Trek" licensed novels...

Sorry, but PG didn't invent or define the essay.

It is a form that is centuries old (and in prior incarnations, millenia old) and have its own long cultural history, classics, and canon, few of the latter being about "important scientific or technological discoveries".

Maybe if instead of "best" he changed it to "most impactful scientifically" he'd have a point.

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