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So, this would seem to be fairly easy to test empirically. Get a reasonably object measurement of the quality of writing, and use it on something where you kno
by rossdavidh 1y ago
So, this would seem to be fairly easy to test empirically. Get a reasonably object measurement of the quality of writing, and use it on something where you know if it's true:
1) court testimony which we know (from outside evidence) is either true or not true
2) scientific papers which we know to have been reproducible, or not
3) stock pundits predictions about the future of some company or other, which we know with hindsight to have been accurate or not
Much more convincing to me than any amount of good writing about writing, would be to have some empirical evidence.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Get a reasonably object measurement of the quality of writing There are objective features of writing, but quality is subjective. Of course, as to the thesis of the essay, it is both trivial and uninteresting that people, including PG, tend to have views of the correctness of an idea and the quality of the presentation that are correlated. It is interesting that PG thinks that this is anything more than a cognitive bias to be cautious about, though.
- machinelearning 1y agoSo one thing to note is that the essay mentions that it refers specifically to "writing that is used to develop ideas" vs. "writing meant to describe others ideas". The way I interpret this is that it refers to claims that build on each other to come to a conclusion. So the way to test for truth is to somehow test each claim and the conclusion, which could vary in difficulty based on the kind of claims being made. As this essay exemplifies, it is difficult to test for truth if you make broad claims that are so imprecise that they can't be verified or don't tell you anything interesting when verified using reasonable assumptions.