Possible counterpoint: LLMs are notoriously good at writing plausible sounding ideas that are wrong.
[deleted]
Good Writing
141–150 of 345 posts
Re: Good Writing
#142Possible counterpoint: LLMs are notoriously good at writing plausible sounding ideas that are wrong.
Fire up an LLM and write a Malcolm Gladwell article.
Re: Good Writing
#143> I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right. This is a wild belief to hold in the post truth age of bs generation machines.
Marx wrote the following about Proudhon:
>M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error.
I don't know if Paul has much of a reputation as a technologist among tech lay people, but this quote reminds me of Paul's fame as a thinker among tech people.
Re: Good Writing
#144I 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…
Paul Graham is a very good writer, but one of the things I admire most about him is that, when he happens upon a truly excellent writer, he doesn't show the jealousy for which writers are infamously known. There has never been a case of a truly excellent writer being penalized, harassed, and eventually banned here.
Re: Good Writing
#145I 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…
Paul’s style of removing all friction might help the concepts slide smoothly into one’s brain, but as antirez points out, they’re less likely to stick.
That's fine. The ideas transmit, the words are forgotten. He doesn't need to use memorable sentences if he's saying what he's trying to say.
Paul Graham is a very skilled communicator. He's not a writer's writer like YKW, but he doesn't need to be.
Re: Good Writing
#146TL:DR: Writing is rewriting.
Re: Good Writing
#147Reading Graham's essays on writing always puts me in mind of the videos where Mexican moms react to Rachael Ray trying to cook ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFN2g1FBgVA ), or a Malaysian guy has to watch a BBC cook make rice ( https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8?si=0AaZ82dk_AYFqJAx&t=226 ).
It helps when you never question if, as in his own essay describing other ‘bad writers’ weaving falsehoods, you’re the one lying to yourself.
Especially about your own significance.
I think PG's essays are (mostly) well-written, and are worth studying as examples of persuasive rhetoric.
But rhetoric has no morals and no relationship to truth.
Persuasion is what salespeople do. Grifters, lawyers, PR firms, politicians, and CEOs all make a living from being persuasive.
That doesn't mean you can trust them not to lie to you.
It also doesn't mean flawed rhetoric means flawed beliefs. Implying it does is itself a misleading rhetorical trick.
Re: Good Writing
#148Reading Graham's essays on writing always puts me in mind of the videos where Mexican moms react to Rachael Ray trying to cook ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFN2g1FBgVA ), or a Malaysian guy has to watch a BBC cook make rice ( https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8?si=0AaZ82dk_AYFqJAx&t=226 ).
> Malaysian guy has to watch a BBC cook make rice (https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8?si=0AaZ82dk_AYFqJAx&t=226)
Of course, this video is just stupid accent comedy, but we should be careful not to draw too much from it. (Let's also set aside the specifics of making fried rice.) The implication of the section of the clip you linked is that the presenter (Hersha Patel) does not know how to make rice properly, and this is evidenced by her cooking it in too much water and draining it.
But this is not correct.
There are, in fact, many different varieties of rice, different cuisines that incorporate rice as a major component, and different styles of cooking rice. Cooking (certain varieties of long-grained? rice) in an open vessel, cooking with an excess of water, and draining the water afterwards is an extremely common and popular way to prepare it for use in some cuisines: e.g., https://youtu.be/TARO_R4cE24?t=420
When this video first made the rounds some years ago, it was surprising to see how confidently people would weigh-in on this topic, despite demonstrating very little background or knowledge. (There's a big difference between saying “that's not the appropriate way to do this in this circumstance” and “that's completely wrong,” and the former creates space to derive knowledge. After all, the dish in the video is a popular one, even in cultures that predominantly eat jasmine or basmati rice, and there are interesting variations in technique and flavour that arise as a consequence!)
> Mexican moms react to Rachael Ray trying to cook (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFN2g1FBgVA)
I similarly do not understand why these kind of reaction videos are popular. There are slightly better versions of this format (e.g., https://youtu.be/DsyfYJ5Ou3g?t=182) but they are drowned out by this kind of fluff. What does one really gain from interacting with such criticism?
Perhaps there is something to be learnt from these situations: ones where, equipped with just a little bit of knowledge, we derive unearned confidence, and use this confidence not to venture forth more boldly in search of knowledge, but to convince ourselves of our own superiority.
Re: Good Writing
#149Reading Graham's essays on writing always puts me in mind of the videos where Mexican moms react to Rachael Ray trying to cook ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFN2g1FBgVA ), or a Malaysian guy has to watch a BBC cook make rice ( https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8?si=0AaZ82dk_AYFqJAx&t=226 ).
Paul Graham is a good writer. He's not an elite-tier writer's writer like "the dead guy" who's not actually dead, but he's still better than 99% of business executives, and he's better in the skills that businessmen want.
Re: Good Writing
#150Good writing comes from horny, hungry desperate artists. Everything else is content.
This is actually true. Also, the mentally ill. A model citizen (NPC) will never produce great art.