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Good Writing

paulgraham.com

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Re: Good Writing

#201

Post by aspenmayer »

not_maz wrote: post #144
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…

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.

I don’t understand the reference being made here, but I’m getting the impression that these things have indeed happened?

Re: Good Writing

#203

Post by frazbin »

adriand wrote: post #176
pdonis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand what he is saying and it’s precisely what I am disputing. I don't see how. Your post was disputing the claim that good design, craftsmanship, beauty, etc. are signs of correctness. And that's not the claim PG makes in the article. Your post never disputed the claim PG did make, which is that bad design and craftsmanship, ugliness, etc., are signs of lack of correctness.

In the first paragraph, he writes, ”I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right.” So he does indeed make the claim you say he doesn’t make. The essay itself lacks anything novel, despite the rather breathless framing: “So here we have the most exciting kind of idea: one that seems both preposterous and true.” These ideas are a couple of hundred years old at least. Kant: “the beautiful is the symbol of…

yep totes. good style is sometimes proximate to good ideas because both indicate the author has spent lots of 'thinking tokens' on the thing, which is a costly and therefore sometimes-more-reliable signal. but i believe it falls apart under intensive selection -- the things we read are popular, and so on average are selection-survivors, which means they'll approach the optimal ratio of thinking token spend on style/vs substance for survival, which may not be the same as the best ratio for precise or insightful communication.

but the best communication survives too because it touches universal truths by connecting them with specific real phenomena. the worst (most harmful) communication survives because it frantically goodharts our quality evaluation process, even when it contradicts truth or reality. e.g. Orwell on the good side, L Ron Hubbard on the bad side. Unfortunately these categories are often not well sorted until after the principals are all dead (probably because everyone has to die before you can tell whether the values are universal or just generationally interesting), and there's a style-bar that has to be cleared before you even get to join the canon for consideration; interestingly this this would tend to increase the illusion that style is associated with substance, especially in older writing.

Re: Good Writing

#204

Post by the_af »

pvg wrote: post #37
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't listen to median human music either. Don't we? What about the music that plays in the elevator, or while you're on hold on the phone? Similarly for writing, I would imagine you read plenty of emails that are of more-or-less median writing quality. And yet, these emails may discuss pivotal decisions, where it is very important whether their arguments are logically correct.

Get a median human to write some elevator or hold music and see how that goes. There's an entire business of making and licensing such music which would not be the case if any rando could just crank it out. Emails, etc, are just 'communication but over text' - it's 'writing' in the very basic sense but it's not the sort of writing people concerned with style and quality care about, either as consumers or producers. M…

I think emails summarizing meetings, or making a case for something, or describing something, match the kind of writing PG means in his essay.

And like the commenter you're replying to, I think that LLMs today can write far better than your average coworker (assuming they don't go on a hallucinated tangent; then again some coworkers also do!).

So it's fair to compare LLMs and work emails.

Not to speak of work wiki pages (Confluence etc) describing technical things, decisions, policies, etc.

Re: Good Writing

#206

Post by the_af »

pdonis wrote: post #112
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…

> LLMs provide a clear counterexample to his thesis. No, they don't. His thesis is not that writing that looks good--that seems plausible and convincing, like the output that LLMs often produce--actually is. He says explicitly in the article: "we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true". His actual thesis is in the very next clause of that sentence: "it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something…

To be fair, most people commenting on it here on HN seem to understand the first meaning (looks good => is good).

I can guess what this says about the readership of HN, but what does it says about the clarity of PG's essay?

Re: Good Writing

#207

Post by Wowfunhappy »

envirogis wrote: post #114
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…

I had the same reaction. I spend an increasingly large part of my day reading and being required to edit AI slop. Part of what makes that hard as well as annoying is that it is all reasonably well written and plausible. Just not factual. That’s the real problem I think all of society is likely to face soon if not already. Not to mention the upcoming problem of new AI models trained on the internet of slop.

...can I ask what your job is where you're spending a significant portion of your day editing an AI's prose?

Re: Good Writing

#208

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

doodaddy wrote: post #166

For all the writing there is about writing, Orwell’s six rules have yet to do me wrong: 1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. 2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. (To add: short words are best, and old words when short are best of all) 3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4. Never use the passive where you can use the act…

Grunt. Sniffle.

Re: Good Writing

#209

Post by monkeyelite »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #155
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 find Paul Graham's writing style to be a bit off. I think he is too overly reductive and simplistic in his use of language and imprecise in his choice of words, and I genuinely don't understand the praise for his writing. You should read his work because these are the thoughts of a highly influential VC, not because they are gems of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Sometimes a longer, more nuanced word has all the rig…

> I think he is too overly reductive and simplistic

I personally feel this is a great filter. The exceptions to the rule are obvious and don’t need to be stated. It increases the signal to noise ratio to leave them out. And the people that complain are signaling their inability to get into the author’s pov.

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