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I 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 conv

by qsort 1y ago

I 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 ago
Yep 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 ago
I’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 ago
  Sure, 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 ago
    I 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 ago
    Perhaps one sniff test for bad writing is presence of a link to the Wikipedia page for rhetoric.
    - antirez 1y ago
      Pontiggia sometimes explained parts of other writers just using rethoric figures, and showing how their application provided new insights into things and concepts.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  > Does having the right ideas really strongly correlate with having a talent for expressing them eloquently? It's about the process, not the talent. When you've carefully thought through and refined an idea to understand whether it makes sense yourself, that usually provides a lot of guidance on how you can express the idea eloquently to others. You know the questions they'll have and the answers they'll find satisfying, because you already went through the same process. When you're just tossing out your first half-baked impression, it's a lot harder to communicate it well, although some people do have the orthogonal talent of making it up on the fly.
- AdamN 1y ago
  Writing, at a level sufficient to get your point across and be well read, is within reach of most people. The writing is not really an intelligence test. The gap is typically that if something is written poorly we can infer the underlying thinking that went into it wasn't well enough conceived to put out high quality text. You can understand this implicitly when you think about how you would write about a topic that you barely know about vs a topic that you are so comfortable with that the writing doesn't even seem like an effort. Ironically people often don't write about the stuff they know best because they presume it's obvious - and it is, to them. And then they write about the stuff they're trying to figure out - which is poorly understood and poorly expressed.
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  I thought about it as well. My answer would be: "eloquence" may be a too-strong requirement, but if you can't express your ideas at least clearly, how can you be sure that they are the right ideas? Because without a detailed description that another human being can understand, this is really hard to judge. Maybe there is a lot of overlooked flaws in your flow. I have a suspicion that there is a subset of geniuses who just intuitively "grok" some important ideas without being able to describe them to other people. Some of the autistic savants come to mind. But I am not sure if they can be induced to actually cooperate efficiently with the rest of humanity. Whatever happens in their minds, seems to be locked there.
tshaddox 1y ago
I 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 ago
  You 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 ago
    You 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 ago
    Yes, 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.

by qsort 1y ago

antirez 1y ago

Yep 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 ago

I’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 ago
Sure, 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Perhaps one sniff test for bad writing is presence of a link to the Wikipedia page for rhetoric.
  - antirez 1y ago
    Pontiggia sometimes explained parts of other writers just using rethoric figures, and showing how their application provided new insights into things and concepts.
SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
> Does having the right ideas really strongly correlate with having a talent for expressing them eloquently? It's about the process, not the talent. When you've carefully thought through and refined an idea to understand whether it makes sense yourself, that usually provides a lot of guidance on how you can express the idea eloquently to others. You know the questions they'll have and the answers they'll find satisfying, because you already went through the same process. When you're just tossing out your first half-baked impression, it's a lot harder to communicate it well, although some people do have the orthogonal talent of making it up on the fly.
AdamN 1y ago
Writing, at a level sufficient to get your point across and be well read, is within reach of most people. The writing is not really an intelligence test. The gap is typically that if something is written poorly we can infer the underlying thinking that went into it wasn't well enough conceived to put out high quality text. You can understand this implicitly when you think about how you would write about a topic that you barely know about vs a topic that you are so comfortable with that the writing doesn't even seem like an effort. Ironically people often don't write about the stuff they know best because they presume it's obvious - and it is, to them. And then they write about the stuff they're trying to figure out - which is poorly understood and poorly expressed.
inglor_cz 1y ago
I thought about it as well. My answer would be: "eloquence" may be a too-strong requirement, but if you can't express your ideas at least clearly, how can you be sure that they are the right ideas? Because without a detailed description that another human being can understand, this is really hard to judge. Maybe there is a lot of overlooked flaws in your flow. I have a suspicion that there is a subset of geniuses who just intuitively "grok" some important ideas without being able to describe them to other people. Some of the autistic savants come to mind. But I am not sure if they can be induced to actually cooperate efficiently with the rest of humanity. Whatever happens in their minds, seems to be locked there.

tshaddox 1y ago

I 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 ago
You 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 ago
  You 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 ago
  Yes, 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.