by Jimmy on 6/20/17, 2:07 PM with 44 comments
by 6stringmerc on 6/20/17, 2:56 PM
All that in context, this would make a great inscription on a whisky flask:
>A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one.
by emtel on 6/20/17, 4:52 PM
It wouldn't even be worth making this comment, except that PG seems to consider himself some sort of authority on writing (http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html) - and for him, the one and only rule of style seems to be simplicity. I'll agree, simple beats overwrought, but c'mon. Great writers have a style that makes you want to copy it, which is something that PG doesn't seem aware of even as an aspiration.
by pascalxus on 6/20/17, 4:41 PM
Case in point, They'll sneer and look down upon you for buying the 10$ jeans (that are the same or better quality as 100$ jeans!), or a refurbished 2 year old 150$ android phone, that works perfectly and has everything you could ever need. They'll hate on you for buying 2nd hand excellent products at low prices. I could care less what they think, but nevertheless, it still impacts how they interact with you.
by scandox on 6/20/17, 8:07 PM
by notadoc on 6/20/17, 6:42 PM
Reminds me of a quote told to me by a very successful entrepreneur: "The best idea I ever had was someone else's"
by dredmorbius on 6/20/17, 9:51 PM
At the very best, grosssly incomplete and misleading.
After rejecting what other people like, the best pg can come up with is ... to follow what you like. That's an equally fraught heuristic, though it may be more avaialble for observation and examination.
Realise that what works does so regardless of appeal. But that there's a great deal which has (near-term) appeal which doesn't work (long-term). Sometimes it's a false start, sometimes it's a fad, sometimes it's cargo-culting, sometimes it's an establishment of common ground which facilitates communication or understanding but not effectiveness.
I'd suggest instead:
Look at what is being practiced, and ask why?
In the case of the short story: the history of literacy, amusement, entertainment, postal delivery, publishing and printing technology, advertising, bundling concepts, and the lack of subsequent alternatives (radio, television), increased literacy, and free time, made the short story a popular format. Different dynamics brought forth the radio serial, soap operas (first on radio, then television, now the White House), sit-coms, movie serials, blockbuster movies, space operas, and comic-book franchise preboot requels.
Funding environments can create entire classes of research or application -- surveillance capitalism, AI, national security, moon shots, abstract art COINTELPRO.
I'm the last space alien cat to ask what you should do that leads to success, though my own heuristic has been to look for fundamental questions, ask a lot of why, and question premises. Going back to roots and history can make a lot of foundations look far less firm. There may or may not be opportunity there.
I'd also focus very hard on being lucky.
by voidhorse on 6/20/17, 2:56 PM
Sure, maybe he came to realize depressing, moody short stories weren't his thing, but I damn near guarantee his imitation of said stories was crucial to his learning how to write half-way decently. The vast majority of philosophers are not good writers. A few stand out as fine men of letters, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Cioran, and some others, but the vast majority of them are more concerned with the clear step-wise elucidation of an argument which, while important, rarely leads to an enjoyable or noteworthy result in the domain of literary style and is frequently bland and dry. There is some special enjoyment one derives out of the works of the like of Russell and Frege, but it relates to the crystalline nature of their ideas, not the genius of their literary style.
Take for instance the rhetorical technique Paul utilizes in the first graph--the repetitions of Mistake n. x. Mistake n. x. Mistake n. x...etc. That sort of structure, and indeed the casual tone, is pretty rare in academic philosophy, and in academic computer science. Where is it more common? In the efforts of short story writers, informal essayists and other such literary folk.
I do agree that its natural to imitate what you like, and beneficial, but there's something to be said for imitating things you are averse to as well--they present more of a challenge because you have to overcome your natural dislike for the thing and really evaluate it--you have to question your own opinion of it, have to see if you can uncover any diamonds in the muck, have to see if, even if you dislike it, you have the chops to pull it off. In short, you grow as a person. Sure, the same thing happens when you make an easy picnic of your studies and imitations, but its silly to discount the value of forcing yourself to engage with views opposite your own, or things you are naturally disinclined toward.
I think Paul makes the mistake of assuming his conclusion in this essay before reaching it. He seems to have decided that none of his history copying these things he didn't like was valuable from the start, when, if he reflected a bit more, I'm sure he'd be able to find that, in fact, those were important links in the chain in some sense, and not total wastes of time.
That being said, he is correct that we need to determine value for ourselves and to come up with our own metrics and schemes of judgement. However, there is still value in the old pantheon--in the recommendations of all the men who walked before us, in all those stuffy critics and analysts babblings. After all, giants are giant for a reason. While it's important, as Paul says, to get over blindly accepting as good or special what everyone else considers good or special, it's just as important to be able to understand why these things are considered special in a particular domain. You have to learn your own predilections--but you also have to learn the rules, the history, the techniques, and the value scales coupled with a field of art--the master is he who can bridge the two, he who engages in tradition while changing it, he who plays by the rules while making his own.
by omginternets on 6/20/17, 7:07 PM
I've often read things I haven't enjoyed (or even understood) until much later.
by samirillian on 6/20/17, 4:42 PM
Not sure I get this. Doing good work would seem to go along with being an outsider in a corrupt economy.
by EGreg on 6/20/17, 2:47 PM
I am going to type something amazing that might get me downvoted.
Vive la difference!