First, make me care

I like where you’re heading with this and to a degree I think that it leads toward considerations about the personality of the author in tow with their writing and writing ability which on its head evokes questions about what makes a person, well, personable. Which turns this into a sensitive discussion about what one can glean about an author’s character traits based on their writing style and when the author in question is only a ‘public figure’ in the eyes of the niche collection of online enclaves who are even aware that Gwern exists it becomes tough to candidly critique his literary persona with the sort of freedom that one may have when talking about say, some guy who’s written for the Atlantic for 30 years and is further from the spaces where criticisms about his work are held.

My criticisms about Gwern’s writing is not meant to be taken...ahem...personally in the sense that I don’t want to use Gwern as a subject for whatever literary critique I’m trying to proffer beyond how useful it is—and is presenting itself—as a fine case to help make whatever point I’m trying to make more clear about how Writing style is inextricable from and indicative of personality or lack thereof. And this is probably a part of what makes reading and writing such a profound experience.

One of the most interesting remarks about Gwern’s writing is this comment [1]:

> Everything I read from gwern has this misanthropic undertones. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly, but it grits me when I try reading him.

— https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135302>

While I can't agree with the entirety of `mola’s comment—I simply haven’t put that much thought into making as grave of an evaluation into Gwern’s character as such a judgement would demand, nor am I that interested in deliberating over such an evaluation—it still resonates with me as a reader and you’ll find in my comment downthread from `mola’s remark that it’s at least plausible that an affinity for self-expression and intellectualizing about the world doesn’t necessitate an interest in the rest of its inhabitants in a way that causes me not to find the thesis behind “First, make me care” to be coloured with a stroke of irony, considering who’s behind it.

You say "style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.” I agree with that and I reckon that it’s still style that forms a non-trivial amount of how you identify with ‘who’ the author is once you’ve become familiar with they’re work and can set an expectation for why their ideas may be worthwhile to engage with in the first place. Again, Paul Graham’s writing has a style although no where to the degree that Maciej Cegłowski does. You can evince characteristics about each of them relative to how and what they write about. You can even speculate on ways that their respective personalities could lead to friction between them. [2]

When we interrogate the “who” behind “who wrote” we are making judgements about the personality of the author and how that that makes us interested in their ideas. Today there are various non-literary mediums that give us a glimpse at a person’s personality with which we can anticipate whether it’s worth reading what they write. But if all you go by is their writing then how they write is about the only way for you to speculate about 'who' the author is and what they’re like as a person.

There are probably holes in this line of reasoning but I don’t think the lines between writing style, personal appeal and the ability to appeal to readers through how you write—effectively signaling to your personality in the process!—are as distinct as I think you’re portraying them. What’s the opposite of orthogonal? Correlated?

To end: Gwern’s writing lacks personality to me. This makes it hard to reconcile with the point he’s making in this article (which I agree with!) and my perception of his own writing (which invariably and perhaps even unfortunately invites speculation into any writer’s own personality).

Again, please, Does Gwern have anything that sounds as striking as “Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” or was that example a tacit hat tip to Brett Devereaux’s work? I don’t think the guy is a misanthrope but I do sense a wall of text—both figuratively and literally—between he and I when engaging with his writing. He is evidently well and widely read and despite my dislike for the visual form of his website I think that it is still a solid technical display of hypertext for personal web design and information architecture. But in spite of this all I find that it lacks depth, not intellectually but personally. ’Spiritually’, if you will.

[1] Now you may be able figure out my reasoning for the first paragraph re: public figures and criticism. I guess that’s this puts me in the camp of those who don’t believe that’s possible to separate art from the artist. Discussing one commands a look into the other, otherwise why bother with ‘art’ and ‘artists’ at all?

[2] Those who are familiar with both Graham’s and Cegłowski’s writing can take a guess at who once called the other a “big ole weenis” in an exchange on this very site.

I feel the same. I found that blog from SSC/ACX and I still much prefer SSC/ACX despite gwern discussing topics that are much much more relevant to my interests (sw dev, Haskell, anime). I can't formulate why but your analysis sounds close enough.

[dead]

I just finished this response to a sibling comment of yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312

I think it inadvertently touches on some valid points that you raise, especially the one about criticizing people within earshot.

> Gwern seems to be onto something about how to engage readers. What do you think that is?

I think that people read for different reasons; there are different kinds of readers. I think that there’s a dissonance between the point that he makes in this article and my perception of the rest of his work. That’s all. Of course defending my opinion so that it is received in good faith reveals more than I want to be taken as an assumption about what I think about Gwern the person, but these assumptions are inevitable when we’re talking about writing to incite intrigue in other human beings and how writing is peculiar form of expression and exchange not just of ideas but also of personality.

Some people may read Gwern’s work and find that its informational depth satisfies their interests as readers. “Embryo Selection For Intelligence” sounds like an interesting topic to me, but not interesting enough on its own to make me 1) wait for the page to load because the entire page took approximately 13 seconds to to yield almost 12MB of data and 2) read it all, in the form what is self-described as a “cost benefit analysis” on the issue, which makes it seem like more technical/scientifically-driven piece of writing as far as what we can expect by way of style. [1]

Lots of people on HN, I assume, are of the sort who are indeed engaged by technically-minded expositions on a subject and if they are at all interested in narrative then they reach for fiction writing and may even find non-fiction books that attempt to wind narratives as wastes of time unless they are immediately entertaining. And entertainment is not something that I intend to advocate for. But I suspect that there are a lot of readers on HN who view reading as a means to an end—the information; and the more the merrier and merit-worthy the writing is thought to be.

Gwern discusses a lot of topics. I’m probably sharing my reaction to the stuff that I’ve read from him that I think lacks personality. If my impression of the dominant literary bloc on HN is accurate then maybe I’ve only come across the information-dense-but-stylistically-lacking prose served on a Xanadu’s sled of a web page sort of work of Gwern's.

It’s been 4 hours. I am yet to come across an "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” in his oeuvre.

> If you crack open some of the mustier books about the Internet—you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones which invoke Roland Barthes and discuss the sexual transgressing of MUDs—one of the few still relevant criticisms is the concern that the Internet by uniting small groups will divide larger ones.

Loading in 6 seconds and serving a little more than 4MB of content, "The Melancholy of Subculture Society” seems like a good candidate. [2]

[1] https://gwern.net/subculture>

[2] https://gwern.net/embryo-selection>

I felt like the movie Marty Supreme completely failed to make me care about the main character until the final act where the filmmakers had to pull out all the big easy stops to force me to care about him. A third of the way in to the movie I was wondering if it was going to be explained at any point why I should be interested in this guy or care about his difficult and fairly unremarkable personality. A lot of the time it seems as if creatives assume that if you’re watching/reading/engaging with their movie/book/artwork then you already care enough to care.