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> The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery To a hammer, everything is

> The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery To a hammer, everything is a nail. I love technology and science, but that doesn't mean that is what makes the best essay. Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific - yes, I'm suggesting that social science isn't really a science. This also then leads to timelessness. The essay on natural selection is timeless. It wouldn't be written today, but it is still a viewport into the discovery, and of the time, and the knowledge is still valid. Maybe I am misunderstanding the point about timelessness. > The other reason the initial question matters is that you usually feel somewhat obliged to stick to it. I also disagree with this comment. I'm currently writing a talk I've been asked to present, and in the process of my writing and researching, I've discovered a whole new and better question. I find the point of a good question is that it can lead to better questions. I do feel that PG is suggesting this as well, but maybe this one sentence just stuck out to me.

mckn1ght 3y ago
> Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific Some of my favorite books are old literature that describe relationship dynamics I still see playing out between people today. Swann’s Way, The Brothers Karamazov, even Canterbury Tales… I think it was Vonnegut that wrote that the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know [but maybe you didn’t know you knew till you read it]. That’s something like surprise, and yet something like the opposite.
graycat 3y ago
> I'm suggesting that social science isn't really a science. In reality and practice, no effort at science is 100% "really a science". But for "social science": (1) It can be a goal to have some of social science be real science. (2) My wife's Ph.D. was in social science, and her dissertation was real science. The work started with a real question, in social science, gathered some real data, analyzed the data statistically, and came to some real conclusions. The conclusions were "new, correct, and significant". Some science? Yup.
deleted 3y ago
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coldtea 3y ago
>The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery That sounds like a trekie concluding that the best literature is "Star Trek" licensed novels... Sorry, but PG didn't invent or define the essay. It is a form that is centuries old (and in prior incarnations, millenia old) and have its own long cultural history, classics, and canon, few of the latter being about "important scientific or technological discoveries". Maybe if instead of "best" he changed it to "most impactful scientifically" he'd have a point.
- libraryofbabel 3y ago
  I graded a lot of humanities papers in a previous career. One of the weirder genres of bad paper would come from very smart computer science/math/physics majors who didn’t have time to do any of the assigned reading and just kind of tried to answer the prompt from first principles without citing any primary sources or other scholarship. This feels like that paper, except the author isn’t a stressed-out college sophomore but a 59 year old “thought leader” with a large audience who gets Sam Altman to read his drafts. No attempt to engage with the history of the genre at all, or with the many other writers who have considered the form, and no examples cited except a famous scientific article by Darwin.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    You've probably already read this, but for those who haven't, it's a fun read: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      I never saw this essay before. Thank you to share. A choice quote: > I blame Eric Raymond and to a lesser extent Dave Winer for bringing this kind of schlock writing onto the Internet. Raymond is the original perpetrator of the "what is a hacker?" essay, in which you quickly begin to understand that a hacker is someone who resembles Eric Raymond. > The whole genre reminds me of the the wooly business books one comes across at airports ("Management secrets of Gengis Khan", the "Lexus and the Olive Tree") that milk a bad analogy for two hundred pages to arrive at the conclusion that people just like the author are pretty great.

mckn1ght 3y ago

> Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific Some of my favorite books are old literature that describe relationship dynamics I still see playing out between people today. Swann’s Way, The Brothers Karamazov, even Canterbury Tales… I think it was Vonnegut that wrote that the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know [but maybe you didn’t know you knew till you read it]. That’s something like surprise, and yet something like the opposite.

graycat 3y ago

> I'm suggesting that social science isn't really a science. In reality and practice, no effort at science is 100% "really a science". But for "social science": (1) It can be a goal to have some of social science be real science. (2) My wife's Ph.D. was in social science, and her dissertation was real science. The work started with a real question, in social science, gathered some real data, analyzed the data statistically, and came to some real conclusions. The conclusions were "new, correct, and significant". Some science? Yup.

deleted 3y ago

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coldtea 3y ago

>The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one describing the most important scientific or technological discovery That sounds like a trekie concluding that the best literature is "Star Trek" licensed novels... Sorry, but PG didn't invent or define the essay. It is a form that is centuries old (and in prior incarnations, millenia old) and have its own long cultural history, classics, and canon, few of the latter being about "important scientific or technological discoveries". Maybe if instead of "best" he changed it to "most impactful scientifically" he'd have a point.

libraryofbabel 3y ago
I graded a lot of humanities papers in a previous career. One of the weirder genres of bad paper would come from very smart computer science/math/physics majors who didn’t have time to do any of the assigned reading and just kind of tried to answer the prompt from first principles without citing any primary sources or other scholarship. This feels like that paper, except the author isn’t a stressed-out college sophomore but a 59 year old “thought leader” with a large audience who gets Sam Altman to read his drafts. No attempt to engage with the history of the genre at all, or with the many other writers who have considered the form, and no examples cited except a famous scientific article by Darwin.
- coldtea 3y ago
  You've probably already read this, but for those who haven't, it's a fun read: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    I never saw this essay before. Thank you to share. A choice quote: > I blame Eric Raymond and to a lesser extent Dave Winer for bringing this kind of schlock writing onto the Internet. Raymond is the original perpetrator of the "what is a hacker?" essay, in which you quickly begin to understand that a hacker is someone who resembles Eric Raymond. > The whole genre reminds me of the the wooly business books one comes across at airports ("Management secrets of Gengis Khan", the "Lexus and the Olive Tree") that milk a bad analogy for two hundred pages to arrive at the conclusion that people just like the author are pretty great.