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When I read stuff like this and reflect on the fact that this is about the peak quality of the philosophical discussion that is going on in our little niche of
by tw1010 9y ago
When I read stuff like this and reflect on the fact that this is about the peak quality of the philosophical discussion that is going on in our little niche of the world, I get slightly depressed. I get that it's hard to find people at the intersection of astounding writing and technical chops, but still, it makes me want to distance myself and just go back to reading the classics.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 9y agoWhat community centered around professional skills do you think has better philosophical discussion? Sure, there exists better philosophical discussion elsewhere, and communities centered around academic disciplines can be more sophisticated because that is their raison d'etre. But when I think of professional communities (e.g., accounting, medicine, law, etc.), I can't think of any better except insofar as they bleed into academia (e.g., blogs by law professors, not practicing lawyers).
- m_fayer 9y agoThe medical field is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talented essayists, journalists, and biographers. I've also read a few wonderful biographies written by restauranteurs. Our field unfortunately lags behind, I think partially because it's rather dry compared to other fields, and partially because SV ideology is pervasive, stifling, and indifferent to many swathes of the human experience.
- jessriedel 9y agoI don't necessarily disagree, but little of that falls under the heading of "philosophical discussion". Medicine is romantic and salient to laymen, so of course journalists are going to write more biographies and whatnot for them on that topic. I almost never find such pieces philosophically insightful, and they aren't competing with Paul Graham essays.
- ak39 9y agoThis is interesting. Would you say that engineers and mathematicians also suffer the same embarrassment? If so, could all of this be a side-effect of being in the world of precision vs being in the world of creative trial and error (where every attempt at writing is judged on the interpretive aspect of it)? I am saying: I get nasty ineloquent on days I'm zoned into coding. Almost like I'd rather not say than say anything I judge to be imprecise. Like this post.
- stillsut 9y agoThis is something I've noticed too. I tend (when I'm coding well) to write with many clauses, and also elaborate them with elaborate punctuation, [, ( ,- , etc... ak, I believe you may have just written something moderately insightful. Anyone else?
- jessriedel 9y agoI've experienced this, and, per my other comment, I think it's a good example of the sort of thinking that is (analytical) philisophical, in contrast to the sorts of artistic prose m_fayer brought up.
- fragmede 9y agoI've also experienced this, especially when working from home for extended periods of time. Thankfully the compiler's application of rules aren't capricious nor does the computer get annoyed when I repeatedly ask it tiny variations on the same question.
- indiv0 9y agoI'm not sure if this is exactly the sort of insight you're looking for, but personally I find that long periods of coding and being "in the zone" tend to affect my speech in the same way. Essentially, I tend to try to be as precise as possible when speaking, often going out of the way on increasingly specific tangents or finding the most elaborate examples to demonstrate what I mean. These tangents and examples always come back to the main point (so I'm not just wandering off), but when considering conversations in retrospect I find that they tend to just muddy the point I was trying to make. Written language and code can afford the verbosity, because you can always review the earlier points to see how they tie in, but speech should be short and succinct, IMO. I believe this is similar to (but not exactly) what is meant by "circumstantial speech" [0]. That said, the wikipedia article seems to indicate that what I'm trying to describe is similar to circumstantial speech, but actually isn't: "Some individuals with autistic tendencies may prefer highly precise speech, and this may seem circumstantial, but in fact it is a choice that posits that more details are necessary to communicate a precise meaning, and preempt more disastrous ambiguous communication." Does anyone know of a more accurate term for this? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_speech
- rexpop 9y agoExamples of these riches, please?
- alexashka 9y agoWell, don't keep us in suspense - tell us of these classics that make concise points, and don't go on and on for hundreds of pages (I'm assuming you're talking about philosophers here)
- rch 9y agoKant's notes on Logic: https://books.google.com/books?id=JTrCAgAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=JTrCAgAAQBAJ
- chubot 9y agoI got something out of it. How about being constructive and share some writing you think is good, or some of your own writing? A page of text is not meant to compete with the "classics", so if that's what you're looking for you shouldn't read this site at all.
- tw1010 9y agoI like HNs culture to reply with a call to action in response to complaints. I mostly wrote my comment with the hope that it might nudge all of us to think about our prose a slight bit more. (I know we're all mostly writing as a charity and do not have much incentive to make any improvement, other than maybe the creative joy or reputational benefits.) I definitely do not hope my comment will shift the trend of our community towards negativity over encouragement. But sometimes sharing your honest feeling can incentivise the writers to improve.
- chubot 9y agoEh, that's not what your tone indicated. It seemed like more of a middlebrow dismissal. But I'm glad you changed your attitude. It's a lot easier to criticize than to contribute.