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I have opinions about writing. So does Mr. Graham. What our opinions have in common is that they are not falsifiable. Unless we validate our conjectures with e
by a4isms 6y ago
I have opinions about writing. So does Mr. Graham.
What our opinions have in common is that they are not falsifiable. Unless we validate our conjectures with empirical evidence, we're really just sharing our taste.
"Oh no," you may say, "I have tested it, and when I write a longer essay, my retweets and upvotes decline." Very well, but the plural of anecdote is not 'data.'
Somewhere else on the Internet, there is someone with poetic, dense writing. When they simplify it, their audience dries up.
Writers and audiences find each other. If you try to measure the effect of your writing using only an audience that has selected your writing voluntarily, you are not measuring your effectiveness, you are measuring the degree to which your writing pleases people who already like your writing.
Absent a properly constructed empirical approach, we might as well be discussing hemlines and necktie widths.
- runawaybottle 6y agoYo, but real talk, didn’t we all just eat his essay up?
- pretendscholar 6y agoNo I really dislike Paul Graham and I find his writing style to be extremely grating. I wouldn't have said anything but you asked. I guess I'm in the minority on this one and I'm a hater in general.
- lioeters 6y agoMay I ask, what characteristics/qualities you find so grating in his writing? Like/dislike of writing style is so subjective, just like musical taste, so I can understand if it's not even possible to verbalize why. Perhaps it's just the "tone".
- yawaramin 6y agoWell, yes, style and taste are by definition subjective. In the words of The Big Lebowski, 'That's just, like, your opinion, man!' ;-)
- GreeniFi 6y agoFor low friction, transfer of ideas, Graham is right. But sometimes sounding like passport application form instructions doesn’t get the right feeling across. Words have a magic about them, and I don’t think Paul Graham would dispute that.
- patrickthebold 6y agoWell said.
- wellpast 6y agoMany a “writer’s” audience is a majority their mother. Sure, producers and consumers “find each other” but that’s no where near the end of the story. You have a flaw in your reasoning here. Not all that is true is falsifiable.
- mym1990 6y agoI saw a lot of irony in reading this comment, most of which I did not understand, after reading the OP.
- ilrwbwrkhv 6y agohaha so true
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- isamuel 6y agoThere is no empirical evidence that can "validate" a normative claim, except to the extent that such claims rely on empirical priors. You can't squeeze an "ought" from an "is," literally by definition. The response "this normative opinion is not falsifiable" is just confused—it's like saying "this empirical observation is not good."
- a4isms 6y agoI did not read the OP as making normative claims, I read the OP as making claims about things that quite possibly could be measured, provided the author stoped waving his hands and was specific. For example, the opening two sentences: I try to write using ordinary words and simple sentences. ... That kind of writing is easier to read, and the easier something is to read, the more deeply readers will engage with it. This is a claim suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship between a certain type of writing and a certain behaviour on the part of people who read the article. My feeling is that this claim could be falsifiable, provided the OP got specific about what "ordinary words" are, what "simple sentences" are, and what kind of "engagement" we wish to measure. If he did so, the claim would be falsifiable. And in truth, I'm not going to say that if he did get precise, it would still not be falsifiable. Experience tells me that yes, we can identify cause-and-effect relationships between empirically measurable characteristics of prose and precise engagement metrics. That is exactly the kind of thing that people do when they try to manufacture "clickbait" headlines. But he chose to make these claims without being specific, and to me this is what makes it non-falsifiable, but not normative. JM2C.
- nine_k 6y agoLook, the entire original post of pg's is about 2 KB. You are suggesting to write a proper paper, backed by proper research. A paper would of course be useful. But it won't replace the short blurb, which communicates an idea in 2-3 minutes of reading.
- andyxor 6y ago>a properly constructed empirical approach I wish there was an A/B testing platform for writers
- yigitcakar 6y agoI think Mr. Graham's advice works on essays and usually on non-fiction writing, which he is fairly proficient. It might even work perfectly on genre fiction. But literary fiction is a different beast.
- when_creaks 6y agoThis study isn't dispositive but I think it's reaching towards the sort of empiricism you're looking for. "If It's Hard to Read, It's Hard to Do: Processing Fluency Affects Effort Prediction and Motivation" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02189.x https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.200...
- PhilosAccnting 6y agoOne thing that tends to offend most tech people I come across: Data is not the basis of existence. Math itself is nothing but a derived value construct our minds play tricks with. 3 apples is a value system in the mind as we see it, not innately as it sits there. Thus, when people say "I want data", they are saying to me, "I want a majority thought based on an abstraction of information (math)." You certainly didn't when you (and me and everyone else) were foraging for a nipple/bottle!