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> It seems like it's not exactly a compliment to Paul Graham to suggest that maybe he is just like Kenny G […] Pardon the allegory, but that’s a shadow on the

> It seems like it's not exactly a compliment to Paul Graham to suggest that maybe he is just like Kenny G […] Pardon the allegory, but that’s a shadow on the cave wall. > …predictable result of a bloom of rhetorical hyphae about how actually Kenny G is probably good… That isn’t present in the conversation; I think you may have misread one of the comments. If you’re going to say that it’s good or bad to imitate Paul Graham’s style, then by all means, do so, but it would serve you well to provide some kind of reasoning or rationale for the advice. (To be clear, general “you” here, not you, specifically.) You can equally advise saxophonists to try sounding like Kenny G or avoid sounding like Kenny G, again, without any reasoning or rationale for it, but I think we can do better. There’s something kind of banal about this taste-making in the first place. It’s much easier to find reasons to say that something is bad. It gives you a much more defensible position, which is why people find it easy to hate Kenny G. Saying you like something would expose you too much to criticism. For whatever reason, some people decided that it’s cool to hate Kenny G, and nowadays you see people dropping Kenny G’s name into the conversation as an example of something you want to hate, by people who have no particular reason to hate Kenny G. Whether Kenny G is actually good or bad was never relevant, because the only relevant fact is that it’s cool to think that Kenny G is bad.

tptacek 4y ago
I don't totally agree with 'idlewords about Paul Graham's writing, which I find generally effective (especially when he's writing about programming), if dry and often distractingly conclusory. But I think it is in fact a good rule of thumb that if you yourself want to write effectively, it's best to avoid off-putting styles. So one point to make here is: it doesn't matter why people hate Kenny G. They hate Kenny G. That's indisputable. So: unless the reason you're playing music is to make a statement about smooth jazz, it's best to avoid sounding like Kenny G. If you want to write as effectively as Paul Graham, it helps a lot to have started one of the industry's most important investment firms, based on no previous experience in finance, and then to write a long string of posts about startups, startup financing, and startup engineering. People accept a lot of "it turns out that" from Graham because he's a credible authority on some of the topics he writes about. If that's not you, people are more likely to laugh at your "it turns outs". I'm sure there's an analogy we can draw to Kenny G there somewhere, too.
- klodolph 4y ago
  The advice to sound unlike Kenny G is equally unjustified as the advice to sound unlike Paul Graham. Most people who dislike Kenny G have opinions which aren't informed by the way that Kenny G plays the saxophone in the first place, that's the whole problem.

tptacek 4y ago

I don't totally agree with 'idlewords about Paul Graham's writing, which I find generally effective (especially when he's writing about programming), if dry and often distractingly conclusory. But I think it is in fact a good rule of thumb that if you yourself want to write effectively, it's best to avoid off-putting styles. So one point to make here is: it doesn't matter why people hate Kenny G. They hate Kenny G. That's indisputable. So: unless the reason you're playing music is to make a statement about smooth jazz, it's best to avoid sounding like Kenny G. If you want to write as effectively as Paul Graham, it helps a lot to have started one of the industry's most important investment firms, based on no previous experience in finance, and then to write a long string of posts about startups, startup financing, and startup engineering. People accept a lot of "it turns out that" from Graham because he's a credible authority on some of the topics he writes about. If that's not you, people are more likely to laugh at your "it turns outs". I'm sure there's an analogy we can draw to Kenny G there somewhere, too.

klodolph 4y ago
The advice to sound unlike Kenny G is equally unjustified as the advice to sound unlike Paul Graham. Most people who dislike Kenny G have opinions which aren't informed by the way that Kenny G plays the saxophone in the first place, that's the whole problem.