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How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Write Usefully

#41

Post by austhrow743 »

rimliu wrote: post #38
meekstro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be kind enough to share any links to your own writing and some of the key factors that improved it. I wish to improve my communication and appreciate that Paul Graham thought hard then freely shared his insights on such a difficult topic for a great deal of people. I've always wondered how and why Geoff Bezos ran Amazon with six page essays and now I think I'm a bit closer to understanding.

Do you also ask cinema critics to show their own movies, food critics to provide their own food, etc.? One does not necessarily need to be able to _make_ something to be able to _tell_ whether something is good or not.

Not even cinema critic, cinema viewer.

"yeah I don't really like the Marvel movies, I think they're overrated"

"oh? Can you show me your movie so I can see what a good movie looks like?"

What a complete and utterly garbage thing to say on that guys part.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#43

Post by pzqmpzqm »

rimliu wrote: post #40
pzqmpzqm wrote: post #34

The first time I read Zero to One by Peter Thiel, I was a bit miffed. Stupid shit stated poorly. The second time, inartful puffery stated overly plainly. The third time, individual brilliance stated clearly. Many replies here would do well to read, re-read, and re-re-read with an introspective mindset. This is perhaps the best quality material I have seen from pg for quite some time. Its clarity is brilliant and the…

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Sometimes a banal reply is just a banal reply.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#44

Post by sjwright »

jstummbillig wrote: post #35
hnhg wrote: post #3

I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here. I'm halfway through and my brain is stunned by the effort of forcing it down. PG needs a break from writing for a while. I enjoyed his early stuff and I hope he gets a return to form. [edit: it's like he's the George Lucas of writing useful articles for hackers: the early ones were classics but h…

This is incredibly lazy criticism. You add no analysis, reasoning or anything of value.

At this risk of being accused of snark, tu quoque. If you don’t understand the basis of the OP’s opinion, you’re welcome to ask. There’s no need to assume bad faith.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#45

Post by keiferski »

pzqmpzqm wrote: post #34

The first time I read Zero to One by Peter Thiel, I was a bit miffed. Stupid shit stated poorly. The second time, inartful puffery stated overly plainly. The third time, individual brilliance stated clearly. Many replies here would do well to read, re-read, and re-re-read with an introspective mindset. This is perhaps the best quality material I have seen from pg for quite some time. Its clarity is brilliant and the…

The ideas in Zero to One are not new and can be summarized in a few paragraphs. As with basically every other book/essay/speech written by a financially-successful person, it is over-valued simply because its author is good at making money.

That said, it is certainly better than your typical business book - but that isn't saying much.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#46

Post by philwelch »

strongbond wrote: post #31
Traster wrote: post #26

>How can you ensure that the things you say are true and novel and important? Believe it or not, there is a trick for doing this. I learned it from my friend Robert Morris, who has a horror of saying anything dumb. His trick is not to say anything unless he's sure it's worth hearing. This makes it hard to get opinions out of him, but when you do, they're usually right. How is this useful? How do I say things that are…

I know several people who keep silent until they can say something clever, and frankly, in most group situations they stand out as being slightly weird. Keeping your intellectual powder dry is just not a socially 'giving' behaviour. What's wrong with saying something that's not clever? Within a group, it might send the conversation off in a delightfully unanticipated direction. There's more to it all than always bein…

There’s a difference between interpersonal social behavior and publishing written work, though.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#47

Post by r3vrse »

Convey a singular point with intent. Below is first paragraph rewritten. Just my 2¢.

---

Essays should be persuasive. But we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should be useful.

Useful writing makes a strong claim without resorting to falsehoods.

It is more useful to say that Pike's Peak is in the center of Colorado than somewhere within.

Precision and correctness are like opposing forces. Useful writing is bold and true. It tells people something important, that they might not have known, without resorting to manufactured surprise or equivocality. This is formative of fundamental insights.

Any idea will not be novel to all, but may still have impact for the many.

In argument: be correct, be important, be strong. This will ensure usefulness.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#48

Post by jmiskovic »

peterwwillis wrote: post #7

Publication bias has the nasty effect of changing what you think. You start writing something because you had something you wanted to say, and then you start proofreading and editing and moving things around, and eventually you realize you're cutting entire paragraphs because your entire position has changed. You're not saying what you intended to say, and you're not sure if it's because what you were going to say wa…

I've also noticed that effect. When you are motivated to sit down and write something, you have a strong point you want to put to words and elaborate. The more effort you put in, the more thinking you do and more related threads to go down, qualifications to elaborate and so on.

You say this is a 'nasty effect', but I'm not convinced it is a negative thing. You started off with a black & white idea and ended up with better grasp of matter. Maybe the edited text isn't edgy and pointed, but it is more mature. Do you consider your v1s better than your v2s?

Re: How to Write Usefully

#49

Post by philwelch »

peterwwillis wrote: post #7

Publication bias has the nasty effect of changing what you think. You start writing something because you had something you wanted to say, and then you start proofreading and editing and moving things around, and eventually you realize you're cutting entire paragraphs because your entire position has changed. You're not saying what you intended to say, and you're not sure if it's because what you were going to say wa…

> You start writing something because you had something you wanted to say, and then you start proofreading and editing and moving things around, and eventually you realize you're cutting entire paragraphs because your entire position has changed. You're not saying what you intended to say, and you're not sure if it's because what you were going to say was wrong, or you just edited yourself into a completely different essay.

That’s kind of the point. Writing isn’t just a way to communicate ideas to other people, it’s also a structured way to work through those ideas yourself.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#50

Post by pzqmpzqm »

keiferski wrote: post #45
pzqmpzqm wrote: post #34

The first time I read Zero to One by Peter Thiel, I was a bit miffed. Stupid shit stated poorly. The second time, inartful puffery stated overly plainly. The third time, individual brilliance stated clearly. Many replies here would do well to read, re-read, and re-re-read with an introspective mindset. This is perhaps the best quality material I have seen from pg for quite some time. Its clarity is brilliant and the…

The ideas in Zero to One are not new and can be summarized in a few paragraphs. As with basically every other book/essay/speech written by a financially-successful person, it is over-valued simply because its author is good at making money. That said, it is certainly better than your typical business book - but that isn't saying much.

We will agree to disagree, I suppose. For you things are simple, and for me they are not. For me, some thinking in Thiel’s book was absolute heresy hiding in plain sight. I suppose we could argue over your concept of over-valued, but I have no interest in doing so.
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