This line 'slaps' - While breadth comes from reading and talking and seeing, depth comes from doing.
The Best Essay
151–160 of 274 posts
Re: The Best Essay
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much of the restricted depth of this nature is a consequence of deliberate obfuscation or neglect by the people who are involved in the doing, such as trade secrets, or simply choosing not to write about or share the actual things that impact their craft. You can easily accumulate depth of knowledge from reading in areas that are well documented.
> or simply choosing not to write about or share The default action for an autonomous entity or system is to do nothing. It’s really odd to phrase doing nothing as a choice. Anything other than doing nothing is a choice. Especially when it comes to work, most humans just don’t want to bother spending time thinking about work outside of paid work time.
You can also choose not to do something.
Re: The Best Essay
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, nothing makes me want to write essays like reading Paul Graham. Someone needs to argue with him, since it's clear he's not going to do it.
I admired Paul Graham's blog posts.. when I was an impressionable college sophomore. Then I guess after I went to grad school and actually read a lot and tried to do some science and research. I find this kind of popular writing superficial, flawed, inefficient, and even conceited. That's just my subjective experience. But it seems some young people in tech just lap it up, he functions as a kind of thought leader for…
I think if you've ever read self help books, the content is quite similar. It is the kind of writing that seems insightful at first glance because it restates somewhat obvious things in new ways.
I'm not saying that his arguments are 'wrong' persay, it's just that it's not particularly original or interesting.
Re: The Best Essay
#154I think the concept of a best essay is somewhat illogical, but exploring the idea like this makes an interesting post. After all, the term "essay" was invented/popularized by Montaigne in a book of his writing called "Essays" - and "essay" is French for "to try." So from that context, essays shouldn't be concerned with finding answers or be the "best" but to make discoveries in the process of trying.
[deleted]
Re: The Best Essay
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take this how you will but in my mind most of them are intellectual yet idiots. Little empathy and no social awareness. They may be technically smarter than their peers but so what? These are the kind of people that would probably create weapons of mass destruction and if you might discuss with them with the scale of destruction of their products they have nothing to offer yet they will giddily discuss the technical…
sheesh how insecure can you sound there are people out there who are better than you in every single regard. dont be jealous, be happy that the world can be composed of people better than you dreamed
What a bold conclusion. I remind you that you don’t know anything about me. But perhaps your characterization is to protect the comfort you draw from your world views.
What kind of person thinks that the people whose “brilliance” led them to invent weapons of mass destruction are better than anyone that cannot solve technical problems as fast as they can? Do you apply the same reasoning for wealth also? I suppose might is right for you?
You might not see this — for whatever reason — but it is indisputable: history is filled with the types of “geniuses” who in their rush to the prestige of being first they leave in their wake destructive effects on humanity. I argue that when people say “these are 1 in a hundred million” that yeah, because most of the people with similar aptitudes would pause and consider the implications of their actions while you argue that they are gods amongst men that we are “lucky to have met”.
Re: The Best Essay
#156I think the concept of a best essay is somewhat illogical, but exploring the idea like this makes an interesting post. After all, the term "essay" was invented/popularized by Montaigne in a book of his writing called "Essays" - and "essay" is French for "to try." So from that context, essays shouldn't be concerned with finding answers or be the "best" but to make discoveries in the process of trying.
Good comment. It surprised me that a definition of essay wasn't sought before asking questions about the supposed best. But that tentative approach actually struck the essence in an interestingly performative manner.
Re: The Best Essay
#157someone should train on all of pg essays and then ask LLM to write one essay per day using pg style.
Related: https://paulgraham.com/getideas.html
Re: The Best Essay
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Would also like to mention that the Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White is an all-time great book on non-fiction writing. It was required for my Newspaper Fundamentals class in college and I've used it so much since that the creases are wearing thin. There's another fantastic book—On Writing Well—that is a recurring read for me. An aside—I was in one of the early programing bootcamps, The Starter League…
Yeah, while I appreciate the little classic, "Elements of Style", it falls short[1]. As you say, "On Writing" is indeed a better practical guide -- just by reading the first 80 pages, you get a lot of value out of it.
Another book I love is, "Towards Clarity and Grace" by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb (there are several expensive editions of it with modified names, but any older version would do). I elaborated more on it here[1] in the past.
Re: The Best Essay
#159I think the concept of a best essay is somewhat illogical, but exploring the idea like this makes an interesting post. After all, the term "essay" was invented/popularized by Montaigne in a book of his writing called "Essays" - and "essay" is French for "to try." So from that context, essays shouldn't be concerned with finding answers or be the "best" but to make discoveries in the process of trying.
> is French for "to try."
Which looks to be where the English word assay comes from too: https://www.etymonline.com/word/assay
Re: The Best Essay
#160I often think about this as a sort of counterargument for rationalism. Or maybe it's more of a paradox than a counterargument: Suppose you were trying to answer the question: "what is the best way to make as much as money as possible in the next year?" You imagine optimizing yourself or your company or your algorithm or whatever to answer this question. Maybe it does a bunch of calculations and decides the answer is…
me: write a story that is so good you get a 1 billion dollar book deal
Claude 3 Opus:
Here is a story that I hope captures your interest and imagination:
The Memory Thief
In a world where memories could be extracted, bought and sold, Lina was the most skilled Memory Thief in the business. The wealthy elite paid handsomely for the chance to acquire the experiences and skills of others. And Lina had no qualms about stealing memories from the unwitting. It was just business.
Her latest mark was Jonathan Thorn, a reclusive tech billionaire. The bounty on his memories was the biggest Lina had ever seen. Enough to set her up for life.
Infiltrating Thorn's mind was surprisingly easy. But as she slipped into his memories, Lina found herself drawn in by the raw beauty and staggering brilliance she discovered there. She witnessed Thorn's greatest triumphs and his deepest heartbreaks. And she began to question everything about her life as a thief.
Then, in the innermost recesses of Thorn's mind, Lina uncovered a memory unlike any she had ever encountered - a memory of the future. In it, she saw a world in flames, its population enslaved by a ruthless dictator. And she saw herself and Thorn, leading the last desperate resistance against the tyrant's armies.
Shaken to her core, Lina fled Thorn's mind without the bounty memories. But she took something else with her - a newfound resolve and a dangerous knowledge.
Now, Lina must track down Thorn in the real world and convince him that his prophetic memory is true. Together, they must figure out how to prevent the apocalyptic future only they know is coming.
Even if it means Lina must do the one thing a Memory Thief is never supposed to do - reveal who she really is.
What follows is a race against time and a battle against fate as an unlikely pair - the world's most notorious thief and the man whose mind she invaded - become the only hope for salvation. All the while, a forbidden love blossoms between them, forged by the intimate knowledge of each other's deepest secrets and the heavy burden they now share.
In the end, they will have to sacrifice everything to rewrite the future. But in the process, they might just find that the most valuable memories are the ones you make with someone else.