4 ms·

I don't intend this meanly, but do you read much non-technical nonfiction? New yorker articles, memoirs, things like that? This one is not particularly an outli

I don't intend this meanly, but do you read much non-technical nonfiction? New yorker articles, memoirs, things like that? This one is not particularly an outlier, but also not a ton of that stuff gets posted to HN.

tpmx 4y ago
A ton of that stuff does get posted to HN. There's meandering with multiple sometimes subtle qualities along the way and there's ... meandering.
raldi 4y ago
Based on the fact that this is the top-rated comment, it would seem to be a position shared by a significant chunk of the HN readership.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I think a significant chunk of the HN readership doesn't frequently read non-technical nonfiction, yes.
  - raldi 4y ago
    Is that not also a true statement about the population at large?
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      Maybe I don't know. But we've self-selected into a forum where the main activity is the discussion of writing so I would expect us to be more practiced and open-minded about it than average.
starkd 4y ago
It reminded me of one of Paul Graham's essays. It is important to hone writing skills as a way of looking more deeply at issues and understanding them.
allgreed 4y ago
This is quite an interesting phenomenon, though it's more unique. I find those kind (can't come up with a sensible qualifier... the best thing that comes to mind is "upper middle class normie journalism") of pieces incomprehensible on the higher strata of the parsing tree. I understand the words (which is not always the case with fiction, eg Blindsight - there are pages where I need to do multiple dictionary lookups, English is not my native tongue thou), the sentences more or less clearly denote facts or ideas, but... the more I read of them the less they make sense together. Yet another funny thing occurred to me: I'm not sure I'm enjoying much non-technical non-fiction. Is Bret Devereaux[0] technical? Well, τέχνη, the root word hints at craft, art or skill. The articles focus on the "how to" (move armies, organize settlements or even write better fiction) merely using "how it was" as a teaching aid and inspiration. So the conclusion would follow that all kinds of guides are technical. Then if a published piece of writing is neither technical (guide / manual) nor fiction (art) - what is it? Isn't it just... data? [0] https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Yeah I'm not necessarily trying to endorse that style of writing either, and I think "upper middle class normie journalism" is a pretty good name for it. But I do notice that HN tends to have a hard time with/disparage writing that doesn't state a clear thesis and move towards it directly. Writing that makes its point "between the lines" or through braiding apparently unrelated thoughts together and expecting the reader to finish the splice are not well received here. I also think that, like consuming only social media probably atrophies your attention span, reading only "direct" prose atrophies your ability to experience the ride of other styles and receive what they have to give. And again I don't really intend this as a value judgement. Both styles have their place and there is no moral imperative to enjoy all approaches to writing. But having a limited palate accidentally, being blind to that, and thinking the fault is entirely in anything that lies outside of it is in a very literal sense pathetic. And here I often sense that it is perceived as virtuous distance from foolishness instead.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > But I do notice that HN tends to have a hard time with/disparage writing that doesn't state a clear thesis and move towards it directly. Writing that makes its point "between the lines" or through braiding apparently unrelated thoughts together and expecting the reader to finish the splice are not well received here. I think that reaction's a combination of that sort of writing sometimes being amateurish wankery poorly-imitating better writers with better ideas, and an awful lot of tech- and science-nerd sorts having decided around 5th grade that they were already expert readers and literature and language classes were just a bunch of time-wasting made-up bullshit that couldn't possibly teach them to be better readers or writers. "It's this entire field that's wrong, not me!" Poor literacy is almost as prevalent as poor math skills, folks are just less comfortable owning up to it. Plus a lot more people overestimate how good they are at it, I think, than do with math skills.

tpmx 4y ago

A ton of that stuff does get posted to HN. There's meandering with multiple sometimes subtle qualities along the way and there's ... meandering.

raldi 4y ago

Based on the fact that this is the top-rated comment, it would seem to be a position shared by a significant chunk of the HN readership.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
I think a significant chunk of the HN readership doesn't frequently read non-technical nonfiction, yes.
- raldi 4y ago
  Is that not also a true statement about the population at large?
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Maybe I don't know. But we've self-selected into a forum where the main activity is the discussion of writing so I would expect us to be more practiced and open-minded about it than average.

starkd 4y ago

It reminded me of one of Paul Graham's essays. It is important to hone writing skills as a way of looking more deeply at issues and understanding them.

allgreed 4y ago

This is quite an interesting phenomenon, though it's more unique. I find those kind (can't come up with a sensible qualifier... the best thing that comes to mind is "upper middle class normie journalism") of pieces incomprehensible on the higher strata of the parsing tree. I understand the words (which is not always the case with fiction, eg Blindsight - there are pages where I need to do multiple dictionary lookups, English is not my native tongue thou), the sentences more or less clearly denote facts or ideas, but... the more I read of them the less they make sense together. Yet another funny thing occurred to me: I'm not sure I'm enjoying much non-technical non-fiction. Is Bret Devereaux[0] technical? Well, τέχνη, the root word hints at craft, art or skill. The articles focus on the "how to" (move armies, organize settlements or even write better fiction) merely using "how it was" as a teaching aid and inspiration. So the conclusion would follow that all kinds of guides are technical. Then if a published piece of writing is neither technical (guide / manual) nor fiction (art) - what is it? Isn't it just... data? [0] https://acoup.blog/ https://acoup.blog/

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Yeah I'm not necessarily trying to endorse that style of writing either, and I think "upper middle class normie journalism" is a pretty good name for it. But I do notice that HN tends to have a hard time with/disparage writing that doesn't state a clear thesis and move towards it directly. Writing that makes its point "between the lines" or through braiding apparently unrelated thoughts together and expecting the reader to finish the splice are not well received here. I also think that, like consuming only social media probably atrophies your attention span, reading only "direct" prose atrophies your ability to experience the ride of other styles and receive what they have to give. And again I don't really intend this as a value judgement. Both styles have their place and there is no moral imperative to enjoy all approaches to writing. But having a limited palate accidentally, being blind to that, and thinking the fault is entirely in anything that lies outside of it is in a very literal sense pathetic. And here I often sense that it is perceived as virtuous distance from foolishness instead.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > But I do notice that HN tends to have a hard time with/disparage writing that doesn't state a clear thesis and move towards it directly. Writing that makes its point "between the lines" or through braiding apparently unrelated thoughts together and expecting the reader to finish the splice are not well received here. I think that reaction's a combination of that sort of writing sometimes being amateurish wankery poorly-imitating better writers with better ideas, and an awful lot of tech- and science-nerd sorts having decided around 5th grade that they were already expert readers and literature and language classes were just a bunch of time-wasting made-up bullshit that couldn't possibly teach them to be better readers or writers. "It's this entire field that's wrong, not me!" Poor literacy is almost as prevalent as poor math skills, folks are just less comfortable owning up to it. Plus a lot more people overestimate how good they are at it, I think, than do with math skills.