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Good Writing

paulgraham.com

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Re: Good Writing

#101

Post by tshaddox »

qsort wrote: post #23
antirez wrote: post #15

I believe that it is not that style helps the content to be more right, not in the way PG believes (like in the example about writing shorter sentences), it is that a richer style (so, not shorter, but neither baroque: a style with more possibilities) can reflect a less obvious way of thinking, that carries more signal. I'll make an example that makes this concept crystal crisp, and that you will likely remember for…

I think the intended implication goes the other way: "But while we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too." In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa. Hopefully that's not too much italian…

I can’t understand why it would be at all safe to conclude this. In any other field, you certainly wouldn’t conclude that good visual design, attention to detail, craftsmanship, etc. indicates anything about the factual or moral correctness of the beliefs of the creators. Do the most beautiful and expensive churches indicate the most moral or theologically correct religious groups? Do the best designed uniforms tell you something about the wartime behavior of soldiers or the military policy of the country? Do the pharmaceutical companies with the best produced television advertisements have the best intentions and products backed by the best medical research?

Re: Good Writing

#102

Post by tbrownaw »

qsort wrote: post #23
antirez wrote: post #15

I believe that it is not that style helps the content to be more right, not in the way PG believes (like in the example about writing shorter sentences), it is that a richer style (so, not shorter, but neither baroque: a style with more possibilities) can reflect a less obvious way of thinking, that carries more signal. I'll make an example that makes this concept crystal crisp, and that you will likely remember for…

I think the intended implication goes the other way: "But while we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too." In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa. Hopefully that's not too much italian…

> In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa.

Yes, if you use some disfavored group's vernacular, there's a decent chance you also use their cultural values.

Re: Good Writing

#103

Post by kristianc »

Interested to know how much Immanuel Kant pg has read. Kant's whole project was about grappling with how the mind structures experience—and how language mediates, rather than transparently transmits, thought. You can never fully get to the thing in itself.

I can see how re-editing can make the ideas more coherent within pg's frame of representation, but I'm struggling with the idea that it makes them any more true.

Re: Good Writing

#104

Post by ajoberstar »

legends2k wrote: post #44

Paul clearly excludes non-native writers. I know excellent thinkers who struggle to express an idea in a given language that they're not fluent in. Another related point: I've seen geeks who're solid in thinking but terrible at explaining what they think.

It doesn't seem like you're talking about the same thing the article is. Graham doesn't say "you must be a good writer to be a good thinker".

> This is only true of writing that's used to develop ideas, though. It doesn't apply when you have ideas in some other way and then write about them afterward — for example, if you build something, or conduct an experiment, and then write a paper about it. In such cases the ideas often live more in the work than the writing, so the writing can be bad even though the ideas are good.

Writers who have trouble expressing thoughts in a non-native language are not actually developing the idea in that language. That doesn't mean they are producing bad ideas, but it _might_ mean they won't produce good writing (in that non-native language).

I took the essay to be highlighting that if you use writing as a tool for thinking, clunky writing is likely to highlight places where your ideas themselves aren't clear or correct yet. The iterative process of refining the writing to "sound good" will help shape the ideas.

This seems to be a commonly expressed idea in other forms. For example, when thinking through ideas in code, the process of making the code more "beautiful" can also result in a clearer expression of more correct ideas.

Re: Good Writing

#108

Post by jxjnskkzxxhx »

tptacek wrote: post #87
gist wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing wise I have a great deal of respect for you (and other top commenters) because you don't have people edit and review what you say you just write it (and take lumps or accolaydes). Something I've mentioned before is I can't get over the fact that Paul has mulitiple people review his essays prior to publishing (which others have defended when I've made the same comment before). I (as most people do) write clien…

I think, as is often the case, there is something to the idea in the post we're commenting on, but it's been taken way too far.

This is the essence of philosophy. Observe X, now argue that everything in the universe is actually X.

Re: Good Writing

#109

Post by kaiwenwang »

yojo wrote: post #65
antirez wrote: post #15

I believe that it is not that style helps the content to be more right, not in the way PG believes (like in the example about writing shorter sentences), it is that a richer style (so, not shorter, but neither baroque: a style with more possibilities) can reflect a less obvious way of thinking, that carries more signal. I'll make an example that makes this concept crystal crisp, and that you will likely remember for…

Reminds me of a line by Douglas Adams describing some particularly crude alien invaders: “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” He could have written something like: “The blocky ships hovered seemingly in defiance of gravity.” Instead he picked a phrasing that’s intentionally a little hard to parse, but the reader feels clever for taking the time to get the joke, and remembers it. Paul’s…

Agreed.

Check out Keynes or 1950s American writing such as https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v01/d8....

Re: Good Writing

#110

Post by pdonis »

tshaddox wrote: post #101
qsort wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the intended implication goes the other way: "But while we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too." In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa. Hopefully that's not too much italian…

I can’t understand why it would be at all safe to conclude this. In any other field, you certainly wouldn’t conclude that good visual design, attention to detail, craftsmanship, etc. indicates anything about the factual or moral correctness of the beliefs of the creators. Do the most beautiful and expensive churches indicate the most moral or theologically correct religious groups? Do the best designed uniforms tell…

You have it backwards. PG agrees that you can't conclude from the fact that something is beautiful that it's also right--he says "we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true".

What PG is saying is that if something is ugly, you can conclude that it's most likely wrong as well.

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