8 ms·
I believe that it is not that style helps the content to be more right, not in the way PG believes (like in the example about writing shorter sentences), it is
by antirez 1y ago
I believe that it is not that style helps the content to be more right, not in the way PG believes (like in the example about writing shorter sentences), it is that a richer style (so, not shorter, but neither baroque: a style with more possibilities) can reflect a less obvious way of thinking, that carries more signal.
I'll make an example that makes this concept crystal crisp, and that you will likely remember for the rest of your life (no kidding). In Italy there was a great writer called Giuseppe Pontiggia. He had to write an article for one of the main newspapers in Italy about the Nobel Prize in Literature, that with the surprise of many, was never assigned, year after year, to Borges. He wrote (sorry, translating from memory, I'm not an English speaker and I'm not going to use an LLM for this comment):
"Two are the prizes that each year the Swedish academy assigns: one is assigned to the winner of the prize, the other is not assigned to Borges".
This uncovers much more than just: even this year the prize was not assigned to Borges. And, honestly, I never saw this kind of style heights in PG writings (I appreciate the content most of the times, but having translated a few of his writings in Italian, I find the style of PG fragile: brings the point at home but never escapes simple constructs). You don't reach that kind of Pontiggia style with the process in the article here, but via a very different process that only the best writers are able to perform and access.
- qsort 1y agoI think the intended implication goes the other way: "But while we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too." In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa. Hopefully that's not too much italianposting for the international audience :)
- antirez 1y agoYep I guess that's true, I often times see that the best papers are written better and make broader cultural references. However, recently, with all the non mother tongue English speakers around, especially from China, I often see great ideas exposed in a bad way. So this link starts to be weaker and weaker.
- layer8 1y agoI’m not sure about that. Does having the right ideas really strongly correlate with having a talent for expressing them eloquently? While clarity of thought facilitates clarity of writing, that’s in principle orthogonal to the right/wrong axis, especially in the ethical sense implied by the Moretti quote. And as the sibling comment correctly observes, the existence of language barriers rather disprove that hypothesis. Regarding the nobel prize quote above, while it provides some food for thought, I’m not sure what point exactly it is intended to make.
- antirez 1y agoSure, it's not a 1:1 map, but often who does an excellent job, does it along all the line: form, content, and the best papers are even shorter normally... They don't have to justify with many pages the lack of real content. About the nobel price quote: it shows that the most powerful language is unexpected, breaks the obviousness of things, something that ancient greeks knew very well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
- layer8 1y agoI was responding to “the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too.” About the nobel prize quote, it isn’t that powerful to me because I don’t really know what it wants to say, and it didn’t lead me to any notable insight either. But maybe that’s just me.
- saltwatercowboy 1y agoPerhaps one sniff test for bad writing is presence of a link to the Wikipedia page for rhetoric.
- antirez 1y agoPontiggia sometimes explained parts of other writers just using rethoric figures, and showing how their application provided new insights into things and concepts.
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- tshaddox 1y agoI can’t understand why it would be at all safe to conclude this. In any other field, you certainly wouldn’t conclude that good visual design, attention to detail, craftsmanship, etc. indicates anything about the factual or moral correctness of the beliefs of the creators. Do the most beautiful and expensive churches indicate the most moral or theologically correct religious groups? Do the best designed uniforms tell you something about the wartime behavior of soldiers or the military policy of the country? Do the pharmaceutical companies with the best produced television advertisements have the best intentions and products backed by the best medical research?
- pdonis 1y agoYou have it backwards. PG agrees that you can't conclude from the fact that something is beautiful that it's also right--he says "we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true". What PG is saying is that if something is ugly, you can conclude that it's most likely wrong as well.
- skybrian 1y agoYou can’t safely conclude that either. It could be a hastily-written rough draft. It could be the result of effort, but written by someone who isn’t fluent in English. Attention to detail is a signal of quality, but these things are just heuristics, not reliable truths.
- pdonis 1y ago> It could be a hastily-written rough draft. It could be the result of effort, but written by someone who isn’t fluent in English. The article says it is ruling out both of these possibilities, as other posts elsewhere in this discussion have already pointed out.
- tshaddox 1y agoYes, I understand what he is saying and it’s precisely what I am disputing.
- tbrownaw 1y ago> In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa. Yes, if you use some disfavored group's vernacular, there's a decent chance you also use their cultural values.
- southernplaces7 1y ago>In this sense it's similar to "Who speaks bad, thinks bad and lives bad. Words are important!" by Nanni Moretti in Palombella Rossa. Nonsense. I've known many writers who are wonderfully eloquent at transmitting their essential message well with text, but fumble their way through live discourse as if they were high-schoolers in their first classroom presentation. Some people just communicate better by certain means, and with writing, there's a breathing space that some can't manage with speech, in which you can better organize your otherwise interesting ideas.
- yojo 1y agoReminds me of a line by Douglas Adams describing some particularly crude alien invaders: “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” He could have written something like: “The blocky ships hovered seemingly in defiance of gravity.” Instead he picked a phrasing that’s intentionally a little hard to parse, but the reader feels clever for taking the time to get the joke, and remembers it. Paul’s style of removing all friction might help the concepts slide smoothly into one’s brain, but as antirez points out, they’re less likely to stick.
- antirez 1y agoGreat example, love this.
- sctb 1y agoFTA: > This is only true of writing that's used to develop ideas, though. Descriptive writing, especially for fiction, seems out of scope.
- Juliate 1y agoEverything starts as fiction for the reader, especially new ideas. It becomes more than that once it gets understood or comprehended.
- gsf_emergency 1y agoThe idea of "haecceitas" has been floating amongst the ... Pop-literati https://www.scribblejerk.com/blog/haecceity-rules https://www.scribblejerk.com/blog/haecceity-rules My take is that it's "writing that calls attention to itself" (or, if you want, writing that is clearly off the wall) Not sure if it can't be applied to exposition, Pontiggia managed it as above? Some pecunious would like it reduced to Jobs ("editing is all you need") but I'd argue Jony has the sparkle, the je ne sais quoi, the more than just functional
- cafard 1y agoI think that the last time I ran across "haecceitas" in a literary context was in an essay by Randall Jarrell. My guess is that he was referring to William Carlos Williams. In that case, Jarrell meant writing that tried to engage each thing as it is, not as part of a larger class.
- not_maz 1y agoPaul Graham is a very good writer, but one of the things I admire most about him is that, when he happens upon a truly excellent writer, he doesn't show the jealousy for which writers are infamously known. There has never been a case of a truly excellent writer being penalized, harassed, and eventually banned here.
- aspenmayer 1y agoI don’t understand the reference being made here, but I’m getting the impression that these things have indeed happened?
- pclmulqdq 1y agoI find Paul Graham's writing style to be a bit off. I think he is too overly reductive and simplistic in his use of language and imprecise in his choice of words, and I genuinely don't understand the praise for his writing. You should read his work because these are the thoughts of a highly influential VC, not because they are gems of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Sometimes a longer, more nuanced word has all the right connotations, and sometimes a more complex sentence carries the perfect rhetorical structure. Paul Graham's writing seems to ignore (or perhaps purposely eschew) such details.
- kayodelycaon 1y agoSame. I always get the feeling his ideas aren’t sufficiently thought through or communicated well enough to be actually be useful. On the other hand, I may know too much about what he writes about to benefit from it. Which means I’m not the target audience. And I don’t say this to sound smart. I’m a generalist. I know a little about a lot. Plenty of people are far more intelligent than I am.
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- monkeyelite 1y ago> I think he is too overly reductive and simplistic I personally feel this is a great filter. The exceptions to the rule are obvious and don’t need to be stated. It increases the signal to noise ratio to leave them out. And the people that complain are signaling their inability to get into the author’s pov.
- pclmulqdq 1y agoA great author drags you into their PoV whether you want to see it or not.
- monkeyelite 1y agoAnd a bad reader makes up concerns before even engaging with the authors ideas.
- nssnsjsjsjs 1y agoYes I think I know what you are getting at. Although PG essays are great if the idea is new to you. But for this one I am thinking "yes I know" skim skim skim! I have experienced the same thing. Anyone who has has their writing edited probably has.
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- lexandstuff 1y agoPresumably, for this concept to stick with you your whole life, you'd have to have heard of "Borges"? From Googling that name, it appears the author you're referring to died in 86. Why would anyone expect him to win the current year's Nobel Prize in Literature?
- brians 1y agoHe was a titan for more than half of the twentieth century. His shadow will extend far into human influence beyond that of many names that won prizes.
- thfuran 1y agoAre the literature prizes generally handed out for works published that year? It sure doesn't work that way in the sciences.
- inglor_cz 1y agoNo, but they are only given to living people. Borges was "waited out" and won't get any anymore.
- energy123 1y ago> I find the style of PG fragile: brings the point at home but never escapes simple constructs I describe it as inverse purple prose. The over-engineered simplicity stands out and distracts from the content. Simplicity in the naive sense of minimal word count increases cognitive load because we have neural circuits that got used to a particular middle ground.
- skydhash 1y agoI'm not a native English speaker and learned the majority of it from technical and fantasy books. It may be me, but the majority of his writing feels like powerpoint slides. You can feel the idea, but the medium is to bland to pay attention to it. I would take a more complicated and nuanced prose that would elicit some virtual landmarks in my memory.
- polygot 1y agoIf someone wants to find the original quote, https://salvatoreloleggio.blogspot.com/2014/10/borges-dove-il-tuo-nobel-giuseppe.html https://salvatoreloleggio.blogspot.com/2014/10/borges-dove-i... says, translated: > One part of that part was published as a preview in a "Domenica" of "Il sole 24 ore". Perhaps it is in the June 21 2009 issue.
- y1n0 1y agoI can tell you that loading down your writing with parentheticals objectively makes your writing worse.
- leononame 1y agoThe quote reminds me of Tucholsky, a German journalist known for this style. An example that comes to mind was his review of James Joyce's Ulysses: "It's like meat extract: you can't eat it, but many soups will be made with it". I think putting a bit of fun writing into reports of everyday events or reviews can go a long way. Tucholsky again, I'm paraphrasing and translating from memory where he wrote a trial against dada artist Grosz who depicted army officials as grotesque and ugly: "To demonstrate that there are no faces like this in the Reichswehr (the army), they brought in lieutenant so-and-so. They shouldn't have done that." Good writing goes a long way
- officehero 1y agoWho reads the latest "Nobel winner" anyway? Or, think about the person complaining "why didn't this movie get an Oscar?" in the Youtube comments. There's only 5 people in the Nobel literature committee and the person they elect says more about them than about what good writing is.
- eranation 1y agoThank you for that quote, indeed memorable. For me the issue with PG's writing, is that it has tiny hints of Narcissism, and that, by itself, hurts his ability to convey ideas. In classic writing, and in my opinion, also in great modern writing, there is a lot of humbleness and even some self deprecation. Sometimes the more the author doubts themselves, the more convincing they are, as it shows self critique, and lack of "Dunning-Kruger effect". p.s. I wonder how many here are not aware you are the creator of Redis. (I assume most do, but chances are many have no idea).