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Good Writing

paulgraham.com

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Re: Good Writing

#21

Post by luispauloml »

There are two sentences in this essay that I couldn't understand. Can someone help me?

1. "An essay is a cleaned up train of thought, in the same way dialogue is cleaned up conversation"

I thought dialogue and conversation were the same thing. What is the difference between them besides one being a cleaned up version of the other?

2. "If for some bizarre reason the number of jobs in a country were fixed, then immigrants really would be taking our jobs."

What does this even mean? Is it an exemple or an analogy? It sounds like at this point in the text there should be an analogy, but this sentence sounds like an example. So, which one is it?

Also, did anybody else got confused too?

Re: Good Writing

#23

Post by qsort »

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 italianposting for the international audience :)

Re: Good Writing

#24

Post by pvg »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #19

...I find it a bit surprising that Paul Graham of all people, writing in May of 2025, managed to get through this entire essay without mentioning LLMs. Because I think LLMs provide a clear counterexample to his thesis. They are quite good at the craft of writing--not perfect, but probably much better than the median human--and they are just as good when the content is true as when it's false. This quality ruins a lot…

Most people don't want to spend much time reading 'median human' writing so the claim that LLMs are 'better', even if true, doesn't really say that much. We don't listen to median human music either.

Re: Good Writing

#25

Post by antirez »

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…

Yep I guess that's true, I often times see that the best papers are written better and make broader cultural references. However, recently, with all the non mother tongue English speakers around, especially from China, I often see great ideas exposed in a bad way. So this link starts to be weaker and weaker.

Re: Good Writing

#26

Post by gizmo »

luispauloml wrote: post #21

There are two sentences in this essay that I couldn't understand. Can someone help me? 1. "An essay is a cleaned up train of thought, in the same way dialogue is cleaned up conversation" I thought dialogue and conversation were the same thing. What is the difference between them besides one being a cleaned up version of the other? 2. "If for some bizarre reason the number of jobs in a country were fixed, then immigra…

- He means written dialogue. Think Plato.

- It’s an example of a statement that rests on a false premise

Re: Good Writing

#27

Post by pvg »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #22

Counter point: systems that force complexity into legible forms often destroy valuable nuance, and richness. - seeing like a state

Scott's 'legibility' comes with a very explicit consumer - a large power structure like a state. Written style is not like that at all - pg can't force to anyone to write in his preferred way nor is anyone obliged to like it.

Re: Good Writing

#29

Post by tptacek »

Look, anything that gets HN people to write second drafts of comments, I'm fine with it. I mean... no, ok, just going to leave it there.

Re: Good Writing

#30

Post by rossdavidh »

So, this would seem to be fairly easy to test empirically. Get a reasonably object measurement of the quality of writing, and use it on something where you know if it's true:

1) court testimony which we know (from outside evidence) is either true or not true 2) scientific papers which we know to have been reproducible, or not 3) stock pundits predictions about the future of some company or other, which we know with hindsight to have been accurate or not

Much more convincing to me than any amount of good writing about writing, would be to have some empirical evidence.

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