8 ms·

You know I’ve never read an article by Gwern that made me feel like he was sensitive to this idea, one that in my head essentially breaks down to the use of nar

You know I’ve never read an article by Gwern that made me feel like he was sensitive to this idea, one that in my head essentially breaks down to the use of narrative and the leverage of “stakes” that inform the reader of kinds of conflict that make a narrative special. I’m reminded of a remark made by David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader. Instead your writing has to evince some kind of innate investment to the reader that piques their genuine interests and intrigue. A lot of writers are tainted by the expectations set in grade school. Write for a grade and good writing is what yields a good grade according to the standards set by the subject which often is not ‘Composition’ but more like ‘Prove to me that you remember everything we mentioned in class about the French Revolution’. I’ve never felt drawn into an article by Gwern at least not in the way that I have been by some writing by Maciej Cegłowski, for example. Reading Gwern I am both overwhelmed by the adornments to the text (hyperlinks, pop-ups, margin notes; other hypertext doodads and portals) and underwhelmed by the substance of the text itself. I don’t consider Paul Graham a literary griot either. But I find that his own prose is bolstered by a kind of clarity and asceticism that is informative and not entirely void of good style and form. Lawrence McEnery of the University of the Chicago contributed a lot of good thinking to this kind of stuff though. This wasn’t meant to be a criticism of the author of this post’s own work. But here that’s how it’s left. I haven’t come across any writing of his that’s as intriguing as "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” seems. If anyone has any recommendations, do share.

wetpaws 9mo ago
Gwern has hands down one of the worst blogs, readability wise, ever created on the internets. His writing style can be hit or miss too.
- 1dom 9mo ago
  I think that's a little extreme to say it's one of the worst. It's definitely a different style to a lot of blogs, but I like how much information is spread across the site. It's satisfying to explore on a desktop.
  - wetpaws 9mo ago
    [dead]
- jefftk 9mo ago
  There are definitely less readable blogs, even restricting to ones that aren't intentionally hard to read. For example: https://www.lilywise.com/amusement https://www.lilywise.com/amusement (Disclosure: written by my kid, who was just shy of 7yo then) Personally, I like Gwern's style and aesthetic a lot, and don't have trouble reading his stuff.
- bigDinosaur 9mo ago
  Gwern does actual research into usability, and that's the reason there aren't any ads on Gwern.net (which alone makes it far from the worst for readability, I mean have you used the internet without an ad blocker on the median blog??). Anyway, it's readable for me, and I quite enjoy it, so perhaps you just aren't the target audience. That doesn't matter at all, you don't need to read Gwern at all.
- orthoxerox 9mo ago
  I agree, but I think I know why I personally have this opinion. I don't like reading hypermedia, and Gwern is all about hypermedia. Hypermedia is fine when you're reading reference material, like Wikipedia. We've all done https://xkcd.com/214/ https://xkcd.com/214/, but at some point you just learn to tune out the hyperlinks. When reading an article written by a single human, I want it to have a well-defined linear structure. I don't even like footnotes or pull-out quotes. Gwern likes to put a "blind" hyperlink or two in literally every sentence. Here's what an "orthoxerox-optimized Gwern article" would look like: - blind links to literal Wikipedia: gone, I can search for more information myself - blind links to external websites: please just pull the relevant information into the body of the article or, if that's impossible, spend a sentence on why you want me to click it - blind links to other pages on the website: again, if it's some relevant information, please just pull it into the body of the article; if it's self-promotion, I can live with links like these if they are the only blind ones left, but the "Similar links" box under the article is already there
Jach 9mo ago
I think for a lot of people, simply having "Author: Gwern" (or some other author they like) is the sufficient bit of information to make them care, it's generic on the content. I've read a lot of not very stylish writing simply because of who wrote it. Or in other words, "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter." Whatever quirks of bad style there are will get a pass because I already care -- style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.
- eichin 9mo ago
  Yeah, but even that isn't going to make me care about why Gwern is obsessing over Venice. Part of that is that I follow Overly Sarcastic Productions on youtube and "Blue" did a vastly better job of expressing/performing "I'm excited about Venice, and in a couple of minutes you will be too!" - an advantage of the medium and of their chosen style, for reaching someone like me who isn't all that compelled by European history. (Yes, I get that it was an example to make a point about a writing style; one of the risks of really concrete examples is bouncing off of the example itself :-)
- tolerance 9mo ago
  I like where you’re heading with this and to a degree I think that it leads toward considerations about the personality of the author in tow with their writing and writing ability which on its head evokes questions about what makes a person, well, personable. Which turns this into a sensitive discussion about what one can glean about an author’s character traits based on their writing style and when the author in question is only a ‘public figure’ in the eyes of the niche collection of online enclaves who are even aware that Gwern exists it becomes tough to candidly critique his literary persona with the sort of freedom that one may have when talking about say, some guy who’s written for the Atlantic for 30 years and is further from the spaces where criticisms about his work are held. My criticisms about Gwern’s writing is not meant to be taken...ahem...personally in the sense that I don’t want to use Gwern as a subject for whatever literary critique I’m trying to proffer beyond how useful it is—and is presenting itself—as a fine case to help make whatever point I’m trying to make more clear about how Writing style is inextricable from and indicative of personality or lack thereof. And this is probably a part of what makes reading and writing such a profound experience. One of the most interesting remarks about Gwern’s writing is this comment [1]: > Everything I read from gwern has this misanthropic undertones. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly, but it grits me when I try reading him. — <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135302> While I can't agree with the entirety of `mola’s comment—I simply haven’t put that much thought into making as grave of an evaluation into Gwern’s character as such a judgement would demand, nor am I that interested in deliberating over such an evaluation—it still resonates with me as a reader and you’ll find in my comment downthread from `mola’s remark that it’s at least plausible that an affinity for self-expression and intellectualizing about the world doesn’t necessitate an interest in the rest of its inhabitants in a way that causes me not to find the thesis behind “First, make me care” to be coloured with a stroke of irony, considering who’s behind it. You say "style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.” I agree with that and I reckon that it’s still style that forms a non-trivial amount of how you identify with ‘who’ the author is once you’ve become familiar with they’re work and can set an expectation for why their ideas may be worthwhile to engage with in the first place. Again, Paul Graham’s writing has a style although no where to the degree that Maciej Cegłowski does. You can evince characteristics about each of them relative to how and what they write about. You can even speculate on ways that their respective personalities could lead to friction between them. [2] When we interrogate the “who” behind “who wrote” we are making judgements about the personality of the author and how that that makes us interested in their ideas. Today there are various non-literary mediums that give us a glimpse at a person’s personality with which we can anticipate whether it’s worth reading what they write. But if all you go by is their writing then how they write is about the only way for you to speculate about 'who' the author is and what they’re like as a person. There are probably holes in this line of reasoning but I don’t think the lines between writing style, personal appeal and the ability to appeal to readers through how you write—effectively signaling to your personality in the process!—are as distinct as I think you’re portraying them. What’s the opposite of orthogonal? Correlated? To end: Gwern’s writing lacks personality to me. This makes it hard to reconcile with the point he’s making in this article (which I agree with!) and my perception of his own writing (which invariably and perhaps even unfortunately invites speculation into any writer’s own personality). Again, please, Does Gwern have anything that sounds as striking as “Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” or was that example a tacit hat tip to Brett Devereaux’s work? I don’t think the guy is a misanthrope but I do sense a wall of text—both figuratively and literally—between he and I when engaging with his writing. He is evidently well and widely read and despite my dislike for the visual form of his website I think that it is still a solid technical display of hypertext for personal web design and information architecture. But in spite of this all I find that it lacks depth, not intellectually but personally. ’Spiritually’, if you will. [1] Now you may be able figure out my reasoning for the first paragraph re: public figures and criticism. I guess that’s this puts me in the camp of those who don’t believe that’s possible to separate art from the artist. Discussing one commands a look into the other, otherwise why bother with ‘art’ and ‘artists’ at all? [2] Those who are familiar with both Graham’s and Cegłowski’s writing can take a guess at who once called the other a “big ole weenis” in an exchange on this very site.
davedx 9mo ago
Everyone's a critic, hey?
rrvsh 9mo ago
I agree, the citations having the little icons were distracting and I had to force myself not to skim. Still though, it's a very illuminating article that applies the very simple concept we all learned in theory to hook the reader but never really seen explicit examples of. I also found the similar pages feature interesting!
ofalkaed 9mo ago
>David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader. He expands on this in his conversation with Bryan Garner (of Garner's Modern English Grammar) published as Quack this Way, and I think he gets to the core issue, which is that your ideas are not interesting to anyone but you; if you are showing off how smart you are, you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care. Infinite Jest is a also a good example of something which goes against TFA's point, it opens with a very sterile, impersonal, literal and completely disconnected first person narrative, he gives us nothing to care about. But it evolves, but he still doesn't give us anything to care about, just has the narration turn in on itself despite it seeming to have nothing to turn in onto. All he really gives us is the suggestion that there is something more than what we can see. He gets us interested and curious but I don't think we really care at that point.
- tolerance 9mo ago
  To his credit and with the exception of mentioning an objective to show his smarts off to readers (which I don’t think he wants to do anyhow) Gwern informs us that he is assuming that we will find what he writes as useful as he does, because his objective is to write things that are useful to himself: > The goal of these pages is not to be a model of concision, maximizing entertainment value per word, or to preach to a choir by elegantly repeating a conclusion. Rather, I am attempting to explain things to my future self, who is intelligent and interested, but has forgotten. What I am doing is explaining why I decided what I did to myself and noting down everything I found interesting about it for future reference. I hope my other readers, whomever they may be, might find the topic as interesting as I found it, and the essay useful or at least entertaining–but the intended audience is my future self. — <https://gwern.net/about#target-audience https://gwern.net/about#target-audience> We can reconcile this with the purport of the writing of his that we’re discussing now—it’s a notice with his future self in mind. And we can compare and contrast the above quote and the aforementioned piece with some of PG’s writing which I find is meant to be public-facing literature at full bloom. [1][2] I think there’s a difference between 'writing for my future self’ and ‘writing with the public in mind’. Howard & Barton (1986) would argue that they represent separate stages of the writing process and I agree with that and prefer writing that is primed for the latter form. [3] I associate the maxim “First, make me care” with the latter as well and by-and-large feel like Gwern’s writing—that which I’ve come across most frequently—is geared toward the former form. Which I’m sure serves him well, as well as I’m sure it’s served well to those who enjoy his work. I’m yet to determine whether that’s a good or bad thing. As I’ve cited earlier, some consider Gwern's writing to evoke a sort of misanthropy. But hey...I’m sure there’s someone else to say the same about Paul Graham and his stuff. I’ll withhold judgement against the both of them on that matter—for now—lest I get caught unprepared to be deemed one myself. [1] <https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html> [2] <https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html> [3] <https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813 https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813>
mmooss 9mo ago
Gwern's point stands on its own merits regardless of what you think of the rest of their blog. And the evidence is overwhelmingly the other way: Lots of people, and especially lots on HN, are very engaged with Gwern's writing, so Gwern seems to be onto something about how to engage readers. What do you think that is? That would be valuable analysis. Or provide constructive feedback. The complaints aren't constructive and don't inform us about the OP. To me they seem pointless and in the wrong spirit, especially when someone is in the room, within earshot. Edit: removed an error in what I said originally, sorry.
- tolerance 9mo ago
  I just finished this response to a sibling comment of yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312 I think it inadvertently touches on some valid points that you raise, especially the one about criticizing people within earshot. > Gwern seems to be onto something about how to engage readers. What do you think that is? I think that people read for different reasons; there are different kinds of readers. I think that there’s a dissonance between the point that he makes in this article and my perception of the rest of his work. That’s all. Of course defending my opinion so that it is received in good faith reveals more than I want to be taken as an assumption about what I think about Gwern the person, but these assumptions are inevitable when we’re talking about writing to incite intrigue in other human beings and how writing is peculiar form of expression and exchange not just of ideas but also of personality. Some people may read Gwern’s work and find that its informational depth satisfies their interests as readers. “Embryo Selection For Intelligence” sounds like an interesting topic to me, but not interesting enough on its own to make me 1) wait for the page to load because the entire page took approximately 13 seconds to to yield almost 12MB of data and 2) read it all, in the form what is self-described as a “cost benefit analysis” on the issue, which makes it seem like more technical/scientifically-driven piece of writing as far as what we can expect by way of style. [1] Lots of people on HN, I assume, are of the sort who are indeed engaged by technically-minded expositions on a subject and if they are at all interested in narrative then they reach for fiction writing and may even find non-fiction books that attempt to wind narratives as wastes of time unless they are immediately entertaining. And entertainment is not something that I intend to advocate for. But I suspect that there are a lot of readers on HN who view reading as a means to an end—the information; and the more the merrier and merit-worthy the writing is thought to be. Gwern discusses a lot of topics. I’m probably sharing my reaction to the stuff that I’ve read from him that I think lacks personality. If my impression of the dominant literary bloc on HN is accurate then maybe I’ve only come across the information-dense-but-stylistically-lacking prose served on a Xanadu’s sled of a web page sort of work of Gwern's. It’s been 4 hours. I am yet to come across an "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” in his oeuvre. > If you crack open some of the mustier books about the Internet—you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones which invoke Roland Barthes and discuss the sexual transgressing of MUDs—one of the few still relevant criticisms is the concern that the Internet by uniting small groups will divide larger ones. Loading in 6 seconds and serving a little more than 4MB of content, "The Melancholy of Subculture Society” seems like a good candidate. [2] [1] <https://gwern.net/subculture https://gwern.net/subculture> [2] <https://gwern.net/embryo-selection https://gwern.net/embryo-selection>
mcmoor 9mo ago
I feel the same. I found that blog from SSC/ACX and I still much prefer SSC/ACX despite gwern discussing topics that are much much more relevant to my interests (sw dev, Haskell, anime). I can't formulate why but your analysis sounds close enough.
- flexagoon 9mo ago
  ACX is honestly an incredible writer. I think it's a very high bar to clear.
  - orthoxerox 9mo ago
    Yes, Scott has a natural talent for writing (there's an article where he explicitly says he isn't proud of his prose because it just comes naturally to him, but is immensely proud of getting a B in Calculus back in pre-med, or something along these lines).
    - reducesuffering 9mo ago
      Yep: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal... Another example of amazing writing (about amazing writing)
trinsic2 9mo ago
Besides the quote, which I think is a good practice, having never read his stuff, he seems like he publishes his notes directly from his note taking app. That's fine if you want to publish ideas in short form, but I don't think any of that is considered a piece of work that has been fully fleshed out. I don't really see any stuff that's designed to actually be a publication.
gizajob 9mo ago
It’s a good quote from DFW but like all great useful pithy quotations it’s usually negated somehow by the activities of the utterer elsewhere. It seemed almost granted that one of the metaconcepts within Infinite Jest was that his ability to churn out reams of that stuff was far in excess of your ability to even read through it.
- ofalkaed 9mo ago
  Assuming the poster's recollection of the quote is correct, there is nothing to be negated, coming to terms with something does not mean you overcame it, No clue how close that is to the actual quote but it sounds like Wallace's phrasing.
  - tolerance 9mo ago
    In conversation with Michael Silverblatt in 1996 (this is from a machine generated transcript, I’ll do my best to clean up after it’s attempts to parse DFW’s stammering): > ...I guess when I was in my twenties, like deep down underneath all the bullshit, what I really believed was that the point of fiction was to show that the writer was really smart. And that sounds terrible to say. But I think looking back, that's what was going on. And uh I don't think I really understood what loneliness was when when I was a young man and and now I've got a much less clear idea of what the point of art is, but I think it's got something to do with loneliness, and something to do with setting up a conversation between human beings. And I know that when I started this book I wanted to I—I had very—I had very vague and not very ambitious ambitions. And one was I wanted to do something really sad. I'd done comedy before. I wanted to do something really sad. And I wanted to do something about what was sad about America. And um I—there's a—there's a fair amount of of weird and hard technical stuff going on in this book, but I mean one reason why I'm willing to go around and talk to people about it and that I'm sorta proud of it in a way I haven't been about earlier stuff is that I feel like I—Whatever's hard in the book is in service of something that at least for me is good and important. And it's embarrassing to talk about because I think it sounds kind of cheesy. Um I—I—I sort of think like all the way down kind of to my butthole I was a different person coming up with this book than I was about my earlier stuff. And I'm not saying my earlier stuff was all crap, you know, but it's just it seems like I think when you're very young and until you've sort of uh you know, faced various darknesses, um it's very difficult to understand how—how You're welcome to cut all this out if this just sounds like, you know, a craft product or something. The part about writing having to "evince some kind of innate investment to the reader that piques their genuine interests and intrigue” is my own interpretation of what I took from interviews between Wallace and Silverblatt on KCRW between 1996 and 2006. Skimming through the entire transcript I have (there’s a 2+ hour compilation of all the interviews on Youtube) this is probably a mixture of remarks made in 1996 (Infinite Jest) [1] and 1997 (A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again) [2]. I vaguely remember a remark of his along the lines of the duty of a writer to ‘always let the reader know what the stakes are’. Or something like that. Another quote from the 1996 interview in attempt to support my previous statements: > [Fiction’s] got a very weird and complicated job because part of its job is to—is to—teach; Teach the reader, communicate with the reader, establish some sort of relationship with the reader where the reader is willing on a neurological level to expend effort; to look hard enough at the jellyfish to see that it's pretty. And—and that stuff's in that kind of effort is very hard to talk about and it's real scary because you can't be sure whether you've done it or not. And it's what makes you sort of clutch your heart when somebody says, I really like this... My favorite one may be from the conversation they had in 2000: > I—I think—I—I—I think somewhere in the late eighties or somewhere some at some point when that sort of minimalist fiction began to pass from vogue It wasn't that the class questions changed, it was that I think the class questions disappeared. And—and questions that were issues that were fundamentally about—about class and inclusion became more for people like maybe my age a little younger, questions of—of corporation, um corporations and consumers and consuming models versus kind of alternative uh homemade quote unquote non—non—corporate transactions. I don't know if this makes any sort of sense. Where I—I know for me a certain kind of smoothness, um, that you could th—that you can identify with resolution, easily identified kind of black and white um heroes and villains, um standard standardly satisfying endings involving the gratification of romance or, you know, epistemological problems. I associate with corporate entertainment whose—whose agenda is fundamentally financial, whose—some—some of and—some of it’s—some of it's quite good. Um but—but its fundamental—its fundamental orientation is um there —there's no—there's no warmth in it toward the reader or no attempt to involve the reader or the audience in a kind of relationship or interaction. It's a—it's a—it's a transaction of a certain kind of gratification in exchange for in exchange for money. [3] [1] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-infinite-jest https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...> [2] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...> [3] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-brief-interviews-with-hideous-men https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...>
keiferski 9mo ago
Thanks for writing this, I’ve had similar feelings about a variety of writers over the years. My conclusion was just that some people write to signal their intelligence to other people by including as many references and complex ideas as possible, with basically zero attention paid to the form of the writing itself. It is just a form of information transfer, not a particular interest in the writing art form. And so if you’re not interested in the topics they’re talking about, and you don’t care about evaluating the writer’s intelligence, the whole thing just seems rambling and pompous. I wish these writers would study essays that are praised for their clarity and brevity. Or haiku, which is defined by its brevity. Truly great writers IMO do not write 10 sentences when one will do.
ashdksnndck 9mo ago
My feeling about Gwern is that I won the jackpot if he happens to have written on a subject I want to know more about. His writing is a wealth of information. It not always compelling if I’m not already interested.
alexdobrenko 9mo ago
> Maciej Cegłowski Where do you recommend one starts with his writing? And who else do you love to read?

wetpaws 9mo ago

Gwern has hands down one of the worst blogs, readability wise, ever created on the internets. His writing style can be hit or miss too.

1dom 9mo ago
I think that's a little extreme to say it's one of the worst. It's definitely a different style to a lot of blogs, but I like how much information is spread across the site. It's satisfying to explore on a desktop.
- wetpaws 9mo ago
  [dead]
jefftk 9mo ago
There are definitely less readable blogs, even restricting to ones that aren't intentionally hard to read. For example: https://www.lilywise.com/amusement https://www.lilywise.com/amusement (Disclosure: written by my kid, who was just shy of 7yo then) Personally, I like Gwern's style and aesthetic a lot, and don't have trouble reading his stuff.
bigDinosaur 9mo ago
Gwern does actual research into usability, and that's the reason there aren't any ads on Gwern.net (which alone makes it far from the worst for readability, I mean have you used the internet without an ad blocker on the median blog??). Anyway, it's readable for me, and I quite enjoy it, so perhaps you just aren't the target audience. That doesn't matter at all, you don't need to read Gwern at all.
orthoxerox 9mo ago
I agree, but I think I know why I personally have this opinion. I don't like reading hypermedia, and Gwern is all about hypermedia. Hypermedia is fine when you're reading reference material, like Wikipedia. We've all done https://xkcd.com/214/ https://xkcd.com/214/, but at some point you just learn to tune out the hyperlinks. When reading an article written by a single human, I want it to have a well-defined linear structure. I don't even like footnotes or pull-out quotes. Gwern likes to put a "blind" hyperlink or two in literally every sentence. Here's what an "orthoxerox-optimized Gwern article" would look like: - blind links to literal Wikipedia: gone, I can search for more information myself - blind links to external websites: please just pull the relevant information into the body of the article or, if that's impossible, spend a sentence on why you want me to click it - blind links to other pages on the website: again, if it's some relevant information, please just pull it into the body of the article; if it's self-promotion, I can live with links like these if they are the only blind ones left, but the "Similar links" box under the article is already there

Jach 9mo ago

I think for a lot of people, simply having "Author: Gwern" (or some other author they like) is the sufficient bit of information to make them care, it's generic on the content. I've read a lot of not very stylish writing simply because of who wrote it. Or in other words, "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter." Whatever quirks of bad style there are will get a pass because I already care -- style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.

eichin 9mo ago
Yeah, but even that isn't going to make me care about why Gwern is obsessing over Venice. Part of that is that I follow Overly Sarcastic Productions on youtube and "Blue" did a vastly better job of expressing/performing "I'm excited about Venice, and in a couple of minutes you will be too!" - an advantage of the medium and of their chosen style, for reaching someone like me who isn't all that compelled by European history. (Yes, I get that it was an example to make a point about a writing style; one of the risks of really concrete examples is bouncing off of the example itself :-)
tolerance 9mo ago
I like where you’re heading with this and to a degree I think that it leads toward considerations about the personality of the author in tow with their writing and writing ability which on its head evokes questions about what makes a person, well, personable. Which turns this into a sensitive discussion about what one can glean about an author’s character traits based on their writing style and when the author in question is only a ‘public figure’ in the eyes of the niche collection of online enclaves who are even aware that Gwern exists it becomes tough to candidly critique his literary persona with the sort of freedom that one may have when talking about say, some guy who’s written for the Atlantic for 30 years and is further from the spaces where criticisms about his work are held. My criticisms about Gwern’s writing is not meant to be taken...ahem...personally in the sense that I don’t want to use Gwern as a subject for whatever literary critique I’m trying to proffer beyond how useful it is—and is presenting itself—as a fine case to help make whatever point I’m trying to make more clear about how Writing style is inextricable from and indicative of personality or lack thereof. And this is probably a part of what makes reading and writing such a profound experience. One of the most interesting remarks about Gwern’s writing is this comment [1]: > Everything I read from gwern has this misanthropic undertones. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly, but it grits me when I try reading him. — <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135302> While I can't agree with the entirety of `mola’s comment—I simply haven’t put that much thought into making as grave of an evaluation into Gwern’s character as such a judgement would demand, nor am I that interested in deliberating over such an evaluation—it still resonates with me as a reader and you’ll find in my comment downthread from `mola’s remark that it’s at least plausible that an affinity for self-expression and intellectualizing about the world doesn’t necessitate an interest in the rest of its inhabitants in a way that causes me not to find the thesis behind “First, make me care” to be coloured with a stroke of irony, considering who’s behind it. You say "style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.” I agree with that and I reckon that it’s still style that forms a non-trivial amount of how you identify with ‘who’ the author is once you’ve become familiar with they’re work and can set an expectation for why their ideas may be worthwhile to engage with in the first place. Again, Paul Graham’s writing has a style although no where to the degree that Maciej Cegłowski does. You can evince characteristics about each of them relative to how and what they write about. You can even speculate on ways that their respective personalities could lead to friction between them. [2] When we interrogate the “who” behind “who wrote” we are making judgements about the personality of the author and how that that makes us interested in their ideas. Today there are various non-literary mediums that give us a glimpse at a person’s personality with which we can anticipate whether it’s worth reading what they write. But if all you go by is their writing then how they write is about the only way for you to speculate about 'who' the author is and what they’re like as a person. There are probably holes in this line of reasoning but I don’t think the lines between writing style, personal appeal and the ability to appeal to readers through how you write—effectively signaling to your personality in the process!—are as distinct as I think you’re portraying them. What’s the opposite of orthogonal? Correlated? To end: Gwern’s writing lacks personality to me. This makes it hard to reconcile with the point he’s making in this article (which I agree with!) and my perception of his own writing (which invariably and perhaps even unfortunately invites speculation into any writer’s own personality). Again, please, Does Gwern have anything that sounds as striking as “Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” or was that example a tacit hat tip to Brett Devereaux’s work? I don’t think the guy is a misanthrope but I do sense a wall of text—both figuratively and literally—between he and I when engaging with his writing. He is evidently well and widely read and despite my dislike for the visual form of his website I think that it is still a solid technical display of hypertext for personal web design and information architecture. But in spite of this all I find that it lacks depth, not intellectually but personally. ’Spiritually’, if you will. [1] Now you may be able figure out my reasoning for the first paragraph re: public figures and criticism. I guess that’s this puts me in the camp of those who don’t believe that’s possible to separate art from the artist. Discussing one commands a look into the other, otherwise why bother with ‘art’ and ‘artists’ at all? [2] Those who are familiar with both Graham’s and Cegłowski’s writing can take a guess at who once called the other a “big ole weenis” in an exchange on this very site.

davedx 9mo ago

Everyone's a critic, hey?

rrvsh 9mo ago

I agree, the citations having the little icons were distracting and I had to force myself not to skim. Still though, it's a very illuminating article that applies the very simple concept we all learned in theory to hook the reader but never really seen explicit examples of. I also found the similar pages feature interesting!

ofalkaed 9mo ago

>David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader. He expands on this in his conversation with Bryan Garner (of Garner's Modern English Grammar) published as Quack this Way, and I think he gets to the core issue, which is that your ideas are not interesting to anyone but you; if you are showing off how smart you are, you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care. Infinite Jest is a also a good example of something which goes against TFA's point, it opens with a very sterile, impersonal, literal and completely disconnected first person narrative, he gives us nothing to care about. But it evolves, but he still doesn't give us anything to care about, just has the narration turn in on itself despite it seeming to have nothing to turn in onto. All he really gives us is the suggestion that there is something more than what we can see. He gets us interested and curious but I don't think we really care at that point.

tolerance 9mo ago
To his credit and with the exception of mentioning an objective to show his smarts off to readers (which I don’t think he wants to do anyhow) Gwern informs us that he is assuming that we will find what he writes as useful as he does, because his objective is to write things that are useful to himself: > The goal of these pages is not to be a model of concision, maximizing entertainment value per word, or to preach to a choir by elegantly repeating a conclusion. Rather, I am attempting to explain things to my future self, who is intelligent and interested, but has forgotten. What I am doing is explaining why I decided what I did to myself and noting down everything I found interesting about it for future reference. I hope my other readers, whomever they may be, might find the topic as interesting as I found it, and the essay useful or at least entertaining–but the intended audience is my future self. — <https://gwern.net/about#target-audience https://gwern.net/about#target-audience> We can reconcile this with the purport of the writing of his that we’re discussing now—it’s a notice with his future self in mind. And we can compare and contrast the above quote and the aforementioned piece with some of PG’s writing which I find is meant to be public-facing literature at full bloom. [1][2] I think there’s a difference between 'writing for my future self’ and ‘writing with the public in mind’. Howard & Barton (1986) would argue that they represent separate stages of the writing process and I agree with that and prefer writing that is primed for the latter form. [3] I associate the maxim “First, make me care” with the latter as well and by-and-large feel like Gwern’s writing—that which I’ve come across most frequently—is geared toward the former form. Which I’m sure serves him well, as well as I’m sure it’s served well to those who enjoy his work. I’m yet to determine whether that’s a good or bad thing. As I’ve cited earlier, some consider Gwern's writing to evoke a sort of misanthropy. But hey...I’m sure there’s someone else to say the same about Paul Graham and his stuff. I’ll withhold judgement against the both of them on that matter—for now—lest I get caught unprepared to be deemed one myself. [1] <https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html> [2] <https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html> [3] <https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813 https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813>

mmooss 9mo ago

Gwern's point stands on its own merits regardless of what you think of the rest of their blog. And the evidence is overwhelmingly the other way: Lots of people, and especially lots on HN, are very engaged with Gwern's writing, so Gwern seems to be onto something about how to engage readers. What do you think that is? That would be valuable analysis. Or provide constructive feedback. The complaints aren't constructive and don't inform us about the OP. To me they seem pointless and in the wrong spirit, especially when someone is in the room, within earshot. Edit: removed an error in what I said originally, sorry.

tolerance 9mo ago
I just finished this response to a sibling comment of yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312 I think it inadvertently touches on some valid points that you raise, especially the one about criticizing people within earshot. > Gwern seems to be onto something about how to engage readers. What do you think that is? I think that people read for different reasons; there are different kinds of readers. I think that there’s a dissonance between the point that he makes in this article and my perception of the rest of his work. That’s all. Of course defending my opinion so that it is received in good faith reveals more than I want to be taken as an assumption about what I think about Gwern the person, but these assumptions are inevitable when we’re talking about writing to incite intrigue in other human beings and how writing is peculiar form of expression and exchange not just of ideas but also of personality. Some people may read Gwern’s work and find that its informational depth satisfies their interests as readers. “Embryo Selection For Intelligence” sounds like an interesting topic to me, but not interesting enough on its own to make me 1) wait for the page to load because the entire page took approximately 13 seconds to to yield almost 12MB of data and 2) read it all, in the form what is self-described as a “cost benefit analysis” on the issue, which makes it seem like more technical/scientifically-driven piece of writing as far as what we can expect by way of style. [1] Lots of people on HN, I assume, are of the sort who are indeed engaged by technically-minded expositions on a subject and if they are at all interested in narrative then they reach for fiction writing and may even find non-fiction books that attempt to wind narratives as wastes of time unless they are immediately entertaining. And entertainment is not something that I intend to advocate for. But I suspect that there are a lot of readers on HN who view reading as a means to an end—the information; and the more the merrier and merit-worthy the writing is thought to be. Gwern discusses a lot of topics. I’m probably sharing my reaction to the stuff that I’ve read from him that I think lacks personality. If my impression of the dominant literary bloc on HN is accurate then maybe I’ve only come across the information-dense-but-stylistically-lacking prose served on a Xanadu’s sled of a web page sort of work of Gwern's. It’s been 4 hours. I am yet to come across an "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” in his oeuvre. > If you crack open some of the mustier books about the Internet—you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones which invoke Roland Barthes and discuss the sexual transgressing of MUDs—one of the few still relevant criticisms is the concern that the Internet by uniting small groups will divide larger ones. Loading in 6 seconds and serving a little more than 4MB of content, "The Melancholy of Subculture Society” seems like a good candidate. [2] [1] <https://gwern.net/subculture https://gwern.net/subculture> [2] <https://gwern.net/embryo-selection https://gwern.net/embryo-selection>

mcmoor 9mo ago

I feel the same. I found that blog from SSC/ACX and I still much prefer SSC/ACX despite gwern discussing topics that are much much more relevant to my interests (sw dev, Haskell, anime). I can't formulate why but your analysis sounds close enough.

flexagoon 9mo ago
ACX is honestly an incredible writer. I think it's a very high bar to clear.
- orthoxerox 9mo ago
  Yes, Scott has a natural talent for writing (there's an article where he explicitly says he isn't proud of his prose because it just comes naturally to him, but is immensely proud of getting a B in Calculus back in pre-med, or something along these lines).
  - reducesuffering 9mo ago
    Yep: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal... Another example of amazing writing (about amazing writing)

trinsic2 9mo ago

Besides the quote, which I think is a good practice, having never read his stuff, he seems like he publishes his notes directly from his note taking app. That's fine if you want to publish ideas in short form, but I don't think any of that is considered a piece of work that has been fully fleshed out. I don't really see any stuff that's designed to actually be a publication.

gizajob 9mo ago

It’s a good quote from DFW but like all great useful pithy quotations it’s usually negated somehow by the activities of the utterer elsewhere. It seemed almost granted that one of the metaconcepts within Infinite Jest was that his ability to churn out reams of that stuff was far in excess of your ability to even read through it.

ofalkaed 9mo ago
Assuming the poster's recollection of the quote is correct, there is nothing to be negated, coming to terms with something does not mean you overcame it, No clue how close that is to the actual quote but it sounds like Wallace's phrasing.
- tolerance 9mo ago
  In conversation with Michael Silverblatt in 1996 (this is from a machine generated transcript, I’ll do my best to clean up after it’s attempts to parse DFW’s stammering): > ...I guess when I was in my twenties, like deep down underneath all the bullshit, what I really believed was that the point of fiction was to show that the writer was really smart. And that sounds terrible to say. But I think looking back, that's what was going on. And uh I don't think I really understood what loneliness was when when I was a young man and and now I've got a much less clear idea of what the point of art is, but I think it's got something to do with loneliness, and something to do with setting up a conversation between human beings. And I know that when I started this book I wanted to I—I had very—I had very vague and not very ambitious ambitions. And one was I wanted to do something really sad. I'd done comedy before. I wanted to do something really sad. And I wanted to do something about what was sad about America. And um I—there's a—there's a fair amount of of weird and hard technical stuff going on in this book, but I mean one reason why I'm willing to go around and talk to people about it and that I'm sorta proud of it in a way I haven't been about earlier stuff is that I feel like I—Whatever's hard in the book is in service of something that at least for me is good and important. And it's embarrassing to talk about because I think it sounds kind of cheesy. Um I—I—I sort of think like all the way down kind of to my butthole I was a different person coming up with this book than I was about my earlier stuff. And I'm not saying my earlier stuff was all crap, you know, but it's just it seems like I think when you're very young and until you've sort of uh you know, faced various darknesses, um it's very difficult to understand how—how You're welcome to cut all this out if this just sounds like, you know, a craft product or something. The part about writing having to "evince some kind of innate investment to the reader that piques their genuine interests and intrigue” is my own interpretation of what I took from interviews between Wallace and Silverblatt on KCRW between 1996 and 2006. Skimming through the entire transcript I have (there’s a 2+ hour compilation of all the interviews on Youtube) this is probably a mixture of remarks made in 1996 (Infinite Jest) [1] and 1997 (A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again) [2]. I vaguely remember a remark of his along the lines of the duty of a writer to ‘always let the reader know what the stakes are’. Or something like that. Another quote from the 1996 interview in attempt to support my previous statements: > [Fiction’s] got a very weird and complicated job because part of its job is to—is to—teach; Teach the reader, communicate with the reader, establish some sort of relationship with the reader where the reader is willing on a neurological level to expend effort; to look hard enough at the jellyfish to see that it's pretty. And—and that stuff's in that kind of effort is very hard to talk about and it's real scary because you can't be sure whether you've done it or not. And it's what makes you sort of clutch your heart when somebody says, I really like this... My favorite one may be from the conversation they had in 2000: > I—I think—I—I—I think somewhere in the late eighties or somewhere some at some point when that sort of minimalist fiction began to pass from vogue It wasn't that the class questions changed, it was that I think the class questions disappeared. And—and questions that were issues that were fundamentally about—about class and inclusion became more for people like maybe my age a little younger, questions of—of corporation, um corporations and consumers and consuming models versus kind of alternative uh homemade quote unquote non—non—corporate transactions. I don't know if this makes any sort of sense. Where I—I know for me a certain kind of smoothness, um, that you could th—that you can identify with resolution, easily identified kind of black and white um heroes and villains, um standard standardly satisfying endings involving the gratification of romance or, you know, epistemological problems. I associate with corporate entertainment whose—whose agenda is fundamentally financial, whose—some—some of and—some of it’s—some of it's quite good. Um but—but its fundamental—its fundamental orientation is um there —there's no—there's no warmth in it toward the reader or no attempt to involve the reader or the audience in a kind of relationship or interaction. It's a—it's a—it's a transaction of a certain kind of gratification in exchange for in exchange for money. [3] [1] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-infinite-jest https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...> [2] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...> [3] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wallace-brief-interviews-with-hideous-men https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-foster-wal...>

keiferski 9mo ago

Thanks for writing this, I’ve had similar feelings about a variety of writers over the years. My conclusion was just that some people write to signal their intelligence to other people by including as many references and complex ideas as possible, with basically zero attention paid to the form of the writing itself. It is just a form of information transfer, not a particular interest in the writing art form. And so if you’re not interested in the topics they’re talking about, and you don’t care about evaluating the writer’s intelligence, the whole thing just seems rambling and pompous. I wish these writers would study essays that are praised for their clarity and brevity. Or haiku, which is defined by its brevity. Truly great writers IMO do not write 10 sentences when one will do.

ashdksnndck 9mo ago

My feeling about Gwern is that I won the jackpot if he happens to have written on a subject I want to know more about. His writing is a wealth of information. It not always compelling if I’m not already interested.

alexdobrenko 9mo ago

> Maciej Cegłowski Where do you recommend one starts with his writing? And who else do you love to read?