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.
Reminds 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.
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
I 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.
Yepp the "academic" flavour of it is ... slightly different (& less relevant imho to parent thread) ... than the pop-cultural one, should have stressed that it exists ntheless. Thank you for providing more context for "context elision" :)!
Dave Barry writes like that, all the time (a lot less so, these days). He uses it for comedic twists, and usually integrated with other tricks.
His writing is known for a very smooth cadence. You reach these “lumps” in the narrative, and can almost miss them, which, for me, multiplies their impact.
I’ve always considered him one of the best writers that I’ve read. He probably gets less credit than he deserves (although I think he’s won a Pulitzer), because of his subject matter; sort of like Leslie Nielsen, or Victor Borge, who were both masters of their art.
He was a columnist for the Miami Herald, for many years, and has written a number of books. The site will let you read a number of his columns. His books read about the same, but longer.
> “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
That is probably my favourite phrase from the whole book. For some reason I find it hilarious. It has stuck in my brain in much the same way that names don't.
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.
That's fine. The ideas transmit, the words are forgotten. He doesn't need to use memorable sentences if he's saying what he's trying to say.
Paul Graham is a very skilled communicator. He's not a writer's writer like YKW, but he doesn't need to be.
Idk, I'm conflicted here because PG is the embodiment of a poor amateur writer with good ideas.
He is literally the proof that writing can be bad (albeit we should define what good and bad writing are and agree on it) but still interesting because of the ideas.
I write for living (albeit in Czech) and I don't think that PGs writing is bad. It is not artistically brilliant (unlike Douglas Adams'), but he gets his points clearly across, and uses a language that even foreigners with limited command of English can parse.
That's good in my opinion - in the same sense that hammer which drives down nails flawlessly is good. PG is not trying to write colorful fiction, he wants to communicate something, and he succeeds in doing so. It is still a hammer, not a statue of David, but there are good and bad hammers, and this is a good hammer. You wouldn't want to drive nails into boards with a statue of David anyway.
I don't share that fully, and I've read every single one of his essays, his arid style gets tough after few paragraphs, it's too dense and harsh, sentences are consistently very short so it feels like reading a machine gun.
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 :)
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?
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.
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.
> I understand what he is saying and it’s precisely what I am disputing.
I don't see how. Your post was disputing the claim that good design, craftsmanship, beauty, etc. are signs of correctness. And that's not the claim PG makes in the article. Your post never disputed the claim PG did make, which is that bad design and craftsmanship, ugliness, etc., are signs of lack of correctness.
In the first paragraph, he writes, ”I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right.” So he does indeed make the claim you say he doesn’t make.
The essay itself lacks anything novel, despite the rather breathless framing: “So here we have the most exciting kind of idea: one that seems both preposterous and true.” These ideas are a couple of hundred years old at least. Kant: “the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good”. This is classic Age of Enlightenment stuff, repackaged in classic Silicon Valley VC style.
yep totes. good style is sometimes proximate to good ideas because both indicate the author has spent lots of 'thinking tokens' on the thing, which is a costly and therefore sometimes-more-reliable signal. but i believe it falls apart under intensive selection -- the things we read are popular, and so on average are selection-survivors, which means they'll approach the optimal ratio of thinking token spend on style/vs substance for survival, which may not be the same as the best ratio for precise or insightful communication.
but the best communication survives too because it touches universal truths by connecting them with specific real phenomena. the worst (most harmful) communication survives because it frantically goodharts our quality evaluation process, even when it contradicts truth or reality. e.g. Orwell on the good side, L Ron Hubbard on the bad side. Unfortunately these categories are often not well sorted until after the principals are all dead (probably because everyone has to die before you can tell whether the values are universal or just generationally interesting), and there's a style-bar that has to be cleared before you even get to join the canon for consideration; interestingly this this would tend to increase the illusion that style is associated with substance, especially in older writing.
> In the first paragraph, he writes, ”I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right.”
But towards the end he backs away from that claim, and makes the claim I described:
"[W]hile 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 the light of that, and of much of the rest of the essay, I think the sentence from the start that you quote was misstated. It should have been stated as "Writing that's right is likely to sound good."
> But towards the end he backs away from that claim, and makes the claim I described:
> "[W]hile 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."
What do you mean, backs away? Those aren't different claims. If writing that sounds bad is less likely to be right, it is necessarily the case that writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right.
Yes, they are. The first claim (the one he backs away from) is A implies B, where A = "this writing is beautiful" and B is "this writing is true". The second claim is Not A implies Not B. Those are not logically equivalent. The second claim is logically equivalent to B implies A, i.e., "this writing is true" implies "this writing is beautiful". But B implies A is not equivalent to A implies B.
> If writing that sounds bad is less likely to be right, it is necessarily the case that writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right.
No, it isn't. It could also be the case that both types of writing, sounding bad and not sounding bad, are less likely to be right (because, say, sophistry is very prevalent).
What is necessarily the case is that, if writing that sounds bad is less likely to be right, writing that is right is less likely to sound bad. Which, as above, is not logically equivalent to "writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right".
> What is necessarily the case is that, if writing that sounds bad is less likely to be right, writing that is right is less likely to sound bad.
That's true. You're 100% right about this.
But if you're able to prove it, you should be well aware that exactly the same proof will quickly show that writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right.
> Which, as above, is not logically equivalent to "writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right".
And that, obviously, is false. They are the same statement; either is sufficient to prove the other. I don't know what happened in your comment.
It's a logical tautology, at least if we make the implications definite (i.e., "sounds bad" necessarily implies "not right", and therefore "right" necessarily implies "does not sound bad"). In other words, "A implies B" is logically equivalent to "Not B implies Not A". There's no need to give any further proof.
> you should be well aware that exactly the same proof will quickly show that writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right.
No, it won't. You really need to learn some basic logic.
> They are the same statement
No, they're not. Again, please learn some basic logic. "A implies B" is not logically equivalent to "B implies A". You are claiming that it is. Any basic textbook on logic will tell you that you are wrong.
If you want to go around calling things basic math, maybe you should actually do the math. You're not going to impress anyone by just parroting the idea that you're an idiot.
I can do it for you:
+----------+--------+
| eloquent | clumsy |
+-------+----------+--------+
| true | A | B |
+-------+----------+--------+
| false | C | D |
+-------+----------+--------+
Imagine there are A papers that are eloquent and true, B papers that are badly worded and true, C papers that are eloquent and false, and D papers that are badly worded and false. We'll also assume none of these values are 0.
For convenience, I'll use the lowercase letters to refer to probabilities rather than counts: a = A / (A + B + C + D), b = B / (A + B + C + D), etc.
We are given the postulate "papers that sound bad [in our terminology, "clumsy"] are less likely to be true". There are two possible interpretations of this:
1. Clumsy papers are less likely to be true than the average of all papers.
2. Clumsy papers are less likely to be true than eloquent papers.
Fortunately for us, each of these implies the other, so I'll use interpretation (1), again for convenience.
We can now define our postulate precisely:
b / (b + d) < (a + b) / (a + b + c + d)
Observe here that the four values a, b, c, and d are all positive and their sum is 1.
We can use basic algebra to rearrange the postulate:
b / (b + d) < (a + b) [because a + b + c + d = 1]
b < (a + b)(b + d) [because (b + d) is positive]
b < (ab + ad + b^2 + bd) [algebra]
b < b(a + b + d) + ad [algebra]
b < b(1 - c) + ad [because a + b + c + d = 1]
b < b - bc + ad [algebra]
0 < 0 - bc + ad [algebra]
bc < ad [algebra]
Let's examine whether eloquent papers are more likely to be true. As an algebraic statement, this is:
a / (a + c) > (a + b) / (a + b + c + d)
Same process:
a / (a + c) > (a + b)
a > (a + b)(a + c)
a > a^2 + ac + ab + bc
a > a(a + c + b) + bc
a > a(1 - d) + bc
a > a - ad + bc
0 > 0 - ad + bc
ad > bc
We have now proven that eloquent papers are more likely to be true if and only if ad > bc. We've also proven that, if clumsy papers are less likely to be true, bc < ad. I'm really, really hoping you can fill in the rest of the proof.
Why did you insist - repeatedly - that a very basic and obvious fact was false? What were you thinking?
> It could also be the case that both types of writing, sounding bad and not sounding bad, are less likely to be right (because, say, sophistry is very prevalent).
No, it cannot be the case that every type of writing is less likely to be right. Less likely than what?
Think of it this way: some percentage of writing that sounds bad is wrong, and some percentage of writing that does not sound bad is wrong. I am simply pointing out that it is perfectly possible for both percentages to be the same, so that whether or not the writing sounds bad gives no useful information about whether it's right or wrong.
I think you are taking "less likely" too literally. PG makes it clear that he is not talking about exact mathematical functions. His intent is much better captured by treating the statements as logical implications, as I and others have been doing.
> I think you are taking "less likely" too literally.
> I am simply pointing out that it is perfectly possible for both percentages to be the same
Come on. If you believe those percentages are the same, what's left of PG's claim?
> , so that whether or not the writing sounds bad gives no useful information about whether it's right or wrong.
He notes, and you stipulate, that if the writing sounds bad, that gives useful information about whether it's right or wrong.
> His intent is much better captured by treating the statements as logical implications, as I and others have been doing.
I have been treating them as logical implications. The difference is that I actually know what the implications are.
How do you think the argument "assuming badly worded papers are no more likely to be wrong than any other papers, it isn't necessarily the case that if badly worded papers are more likely to be wrong than other papers, conclusion X would follow" works? You want to use logic instead of algebra? Every conclusion follows from a contradiction.
No, it is not.
If A -> B is Not logically equivalent as If Not A -> Not B. Many make this mistake.
It is equivalent to If Not B -> Not A.
In this case, if a writing that sounds bad is less likely to be right - leads to - if the writing is right the writing is likely to sound good, (and only that).
> If A -> B is Not logically equivalent as If Not A -> Not B. Many make this mistake.
But many people making a mistake won't show that everything anyone says is an example of that mistake. Your observation isn't relevant here, because a claim of that form hasn't been made. We don't have "not", we have "less", which behaves differently.
For the claim "f(a) > f(b) -> g(a) > g(b)", it is trivial to show that "f(a) < f(b) -> g(a) < g(b)". These two claims are identical to each other. The proof is one step long.
In the present context, we have f(x) representing "quality of the writing in x" and g(x) representing "likelihood that the ideas in x are correct".
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.
> 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.
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
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.
Pontiggia sometimes explained parts of other writers just using rethoric figures, and showing how their application provided new insights into things and concepts.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
> 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.
I'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.
Presumably, 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?
The 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."
Yes 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.
Who 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.
I 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.
> 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.
Wait, I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make here. Is it that I commented about Paul Graham's writing style in response to a PG essay on writing style? Is that "making up concerns before even engaging with the author's ideas"? The whole point of the essay we're discussing is writing style, and in particular a set of suggestions he has based on his own work.
It's valid to criticize someone for not giving a piece of writing a charitable read before criticising the author's style, but that does not seem to apply when the topic of the essay is the author's style. Writing style is largely about figuring out how to direct the reader to your ideas, so it seems axiomatic that any piece of writing that needs a high-effort charitable read is poorly written (this, by the way, is in TFA).
As to your original point, being too vague also doesn't increase signal to noise ratio. It just lets you write as though a lot of noise is signal.
> Is that "making up concerns before even engaging with the author's ideas"?
I am responding to the point that pg’s writing is too reductionist. Comments on these articles often include “what about [obvious exception that distract from the main idea]”.
These comments indicate they are trying to dismiss rather than understand (the author didn’t even consider my idea!)
As an example, “San Francisco is wealthier than Bakersfield”. Almost certainly a bad reader will complain that this does not apply to every resident. But we all know what is meant.
So my general takeaway is that making broad statements without qualification can be a strength, because you filter out bad readers who aren’t interested in big ideas. And catering to them (who cannot be satisfied) only worsens the experience for your interested audience.
This itself is of course a broad statement with exception.
PG's writing is often so reductionist it muddies his points and HN commenters are often pedants about meaningless issues. Both can be true.
I don't blame PG for the pedantry over the minutiae. That's on the readers, and people on HN specifically are prone to this kind of pedantry. I do blame him for weakening his points by using bad language to express them.
TFA isn't about how to read, though. It's about writing.
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).
Paul 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.
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.