I hate the concept of a “second brain” but this isn’t necessarily true.
Those guides you make at work seemingly precede the action of someone else, right? And even if the notes you write for yourself aren’t needed afterwards, don’t they contribute to “doing the thing”?
I think “second brain isn’t doing” is a good antidote to procrastination-by-organization, but it’s not universally true. Guides/runbooks are clearly “doing” because they enable action by others. Even personal notes can be “doing” if they change decisions, reduce re-entry cost, or prevent repeating mistakes. The failure mode is when system-building becomes a substitute for output, not a support for it.
> Hey, we'd boycott Instagram too if we could, but we need it to get this message to you. Share this message widely on Instagram, encourage your friends to repost, get everyone on board. But while you're on the platform, do not click any ads and do not shop any brands that you see from links on the platform.
Video embedded on the page is also hosted on YouTube.
This isn’t meant to be a snark reduction but I’m wondering how well-coordinated this effort can be if they couldn’t go ‘all in’ on the resistance and spread this message by alternative means all across the board.
Bluesky? Mastodon? I’m sure you can gain traction on IG and then lead people there...but it says a lot on its face. And the demand in general is a lot; to ask of people to cut ties with their digital services, just about every single one you can think of, without offering comprehensive alternatives. And with exception to apparently two.
I get the point behind it but I feel like these are the things I have to consider to not take this as performative and instead as practical. And it’s not totally impractical but I wonder if the people in and adjacent to Scott Galloway’s network are enough for this to leave the desired dent. Because beyond that I’m doubtful.
I imagine so regarding GPUs, right? Is this is a legitimate project then doesn’t it provide a proof of concept for performance constraints that relate to them? Couldn't the environmentally concerned take this as an indicator that the technology can progress without relying on as much energy is potentially spent now? Shouldn’t researchers in the industry be thinking of ways to prevent the future capabilities of the technology from outrunning the capacity of the infrastructure?
I know very little about AI but these are things that come to mind here for me.
GPUs are more efficient than CPUs for LLM inference, using less energy per token and being cheaper overall. Yes, a single data center GPU draws a lot of power and costs a fortune, but it can also serve a lot more people in the time your CPU or consumer GPU needs to respond to a single prompt.
In order to be taken serious I feel like statements like this need to be qualified with who the claimant is imagining to be responsible for generating the anticipated output. The ‘A’ in AI isn’t for ‘autonomous’.
Bartosz Ciechanowski could generate an explainer like this using Claude today if he wanted to. But would he? If someone like him had the mind to do it then they could instead. But where’s it at? These types may hold themselves to a standard above this method. No shame in that.
This version has the general form of the original, So why does it seem there is something odd about it?
Whoever the guy from ‘Strangest Loop’ is it’s my impression that it’s meant to resonate with self-starters; as if he’s speaking from that vantage of and for hustle culture. The grinders. The movers. The seniors. The managers. The founders. [1]
I don’t get that vibe from this derivative and in fact I think it carries a slight affect of a neurotic employee while the original airs determination. Reading this brings one into the mind of an observer, the founder of a VC firm, watching OP wring over a Palo Alto brewed latte.
[1] Am I the only one who was unable to find out his actual name on this website?
> I've been fascinated with The Waste Land ever since junior year of high school, when my creative writing teacher saw a copy of it on my desk and said "why do you have that, you'll never understand it”.
Was Teach’ really that crude or do you figure they were just trying to light a fire up under ye.
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.
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.
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 :-)
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.
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.
> 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 quite see the link to Devereaux here. But, if anything, I think Devereaux is not at all similar to the writing style in the “Empire without farms” thing here. On ACOUP, he just bluntly tells you what the plan is and then executes it. He does engaging content and funny stuff, but it is sprinkled throughout the text rather than being a gimmicky hook to draw the reader in. For example,
Starts out with one paragraph about where we are in the series of blog posts and a super zoomed out description of what the series is about.
Then a paragraph about the fact that he had been planning an alternative ordering for the blog posts. If I don’t already care, that’s not going to make me care.
Then we finally get a direct no-frills statement describing the specific question to be answered in this post. It’s blunt and it doesn’t ask a “get ready for a surprise” type question.
I like it. This is a confident and adult writing style. To me,
“Venice ruled half the Mediterranean. And yet… it had no farms. How do you have an empire without farms?”
Comes off as an author a trying to convince the reader that they have something clever to say. Almost always this is the result of worrying too much about style.
IMO, the best way to come up with a clever phrasing is to start by writing down a direct version first, to figure out what you really want to say. Then, just don’t write a clever phrasing, the reader will appreciate your respect for their time.
You’re right. I was just riffing on the implied subject matter based on the title of Gwern's imaginary essay and how it reminds me of something that Devereaux would write about. In asking if he had anything that sounds as striking as the title that’s as far as I was taking the link between the two.
The ‘serialized’ voice that Devereaux uses works. Especially when you start from the beginning. I only hopped around a few posts while browsing his archive, but what I’m imagining is from the first post in 2019 all the way until the more recent one you shared, is an ongoing conversation. [1] Or something like a tour (“Welcome to my collection!”). Confident is a good way to describe the style. I like how I feel immediately orientated about the subject matter and the context surrounding how the writing came about.
Here’s a similar introduction from 2022:
> This week we’re going to start tackling a complex and much debated question: ‘how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?’ This was the topic that won the vote among the patrons of the ACOUP Senate. The original questions here were ‘what caused the loss of state capacity during the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West’ and ‘how could science fiction better reflect such a collapse or massive change?’ By way of answer, I want to boil those questions down into something a bit more direct: how bad was the fall of Rome in the West?
I deliberately sought out the introduction of an essay that was the beginning of a series instead of one that is...Part IVb. Whoever is reading Part IVb of the history of "the heavy infantry of the ancient Greek poleis" is probably too invested and enthused not to care about meta-commentary about alternative sequencing for the series. The quote above is from a Part I entry and I can’t say that the meta-commentary that similarly starts this off makes me less interested in it. The intrigue is set early on and with confidence. If I didn’t care before, well I do now. I sort of feel compelled to care. I have at least a weeks worth of lectures to catch up on about the fall of Western Rome and there’s apparently a senate’s worth of similarly-invested readers who have already deliberated that the severity of its collapse is of utmost importance this week.
`Jach madę a comment elsewhere about how “style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.” [2] The thing is that in Devereaux’s case most of the essays that I’ve found begin with this ‘casual professorial’ sort of tone. I’m meandering and I don’t want to conclude all of this with a point that misinterprets your own to forge the upper-hand in an argument that doesn’t exist.
Referring back to the sample “Farm” essay:
> Venice ruled half the Mediterranean. And yet… it had no farms. How do you have an empire without farms?
I don’t think that this is cleverly phrased or that it's a set up for something clever later on. At least I don’t think so if we’re using the word in a way that evokes strokes of ingenuity and not with a negative connotation, like ‘trite’ or ’slick’. It may be ‘clever’ in a sense like “This sounds like the intro from a page straight of a pop history NYT best seller”. I could go with that. Yeah, it is indicative of something I probably wouldn’t care to read not only because it comes across as ‘clever’, but more so unsophisticated. Let us bear in mind however, that this is a softball introduction used to make a point. It looks like neither of us are convinced that it does so successfully anyhow.
Devereaux’s second post, and first essay on acoup.blog start off:
> Evaluating armor designs, especially in works of fantasy or speculative fiction, can be a tricky business. Often times, we can see a design and know something is off about it, but not quite what. Or alternatively, fans and internet commentators will blast this or that design in TV or a movie simply because it does not conform to their own narrow vision of what armor is ‘supposed’ to look like. I’ve seen fictional examples of gambesons, muscle cuirasses, mirror-plates and pectorals all mocked by self-appointed expects – and these are armors that were worn historically!
> So how can we do better assess if armor ‘makes sense,’ even when it is a non-historical design?
From what I could find, this is the sole departure from the ’serialized’, ‘casual professorial’ voice I described earlier. What would you call this? I think it lacks the air of sophistication and in media res meta-commentary that the rest of his writing begins with. To `Jach’s point it does appear to stylistically serve as an introduction of its own to the author himself.
Informative is what I’d call it. And there are so many different ways to inform the reader depending on the circumstance.
> Venice ruled half the Mediterranean. And yet… it had no farms. How do you have an empire without farms?
This is uninformative. Clever? If information is to be turned like a trick, for sure.
It's risky business inferring personality from writing samples because people can and do adopt different styles in their writing depending on circumstance and whimsy. As an exercise, read something from James Mickens, and try to imitate his style for some other technical topic. It's actually not that hard, at least to get within throwing distance, refinement is always possible. He probably doesn't write family letters or most emails or technical documentation that way though. Once you have a broader sample from an author across different topics and genres, and even sampling on short-form writing or interviews, you can be on better footing for guessing what their personality is like without having to go through the effort of getting to know them as an individual (which is otherwise the usual constraint) but you still risk being quite over-confidently wrong.
Certainly you're right that aspects of writing including style come to be expected over time by an audience, and if what were supposedly fixed things suddenly change it's usually not pleasant. Though to a fresh reader, the new version might be far preferable. Some authors could use an editor, some authors could tell their editor to back off more.
In the similar space of personalities we're discussing, I'd also bring up patio11, whose writing I've sampled for a long time here and elsewhere (I still think of him as the bingo card guy). I've mostly enjoyed it but I would not mind at all if his question-anticipating style and stating-things-precisely-but-also-precisely-vaguely-so-as-not-to-create-any-chance-at-liabilities style went away. The content overcomes the style and matters more, which I'd like to think is usual for me and how I evaluate things anyway.
The misanthrope comment is pretty funny. I'd disagree, especially considering how gwern has handled crazy person emails, but also because I'm somewhat misanthropic myself and figure gwern is probably less so, but who knows, it's a pretty bold thing to claim of someone else you don't know personally one way or another. I think what might be there for people to pick up on is a sense of superiority but in the form of distance, illustrated by this anonymous quote: "If I am superior to others, if I am above others, then I do not need others. When I say that I am above others, it does not mean that I feel better than them, it means that I am at a distance from them, a safe distance." (But again perhaps not, I just like that quote and is how I've felt of myself at times, more when I was younger.)
The opposite of orthogonal is non-orthogonal, the components are not completely independent, but it's left unstated how dependent they then are. (You could also say the inner product is non-zero if talking about vectors. There are many numbers that are non-zero.) I'd agree that there is something of an artist in an artist's works, but it's again risky (if you care about not being wrong too much anyway, or whatever consequences can come from being wrong) to speculate what exactly that something is, especially if all you have is the work. People all too often read way more into things than what is actually there. The author themself is a more reliable source for what parts of themselves are in something. (I'm reminded of Tolkien's hatred of allegory that he talks about in the preface. His letters go into further detail about what of the artist is or is not in art, intentionally or unintentionally. You could say the art itself talks about it too -- e.g. the Ring by nature of its maker is not like other mere tools which can be used for either good or evil.) For your first footnote, then, I'm in the camp of separation, and it's perfectly fine to talk of one without talk of the other, and for little of an artist's being to leak through. It's also healthier, at least I think it's unhealthy how many people seem to work themselves into a frenzy about something about the artist that prevents them from looking at the art more on its own. And again, if you're not using outside sources, what you can infer about someone purely from the art, purely from the fact that they made something rather than nothing, and this particular something rather than something else, is more limited than what some people imagine. "The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz" is a work of bizarro-fiction, I think there are plenty of people who would wish the author were killed just for admitting to having such thoughts by fact of putting them to paper. I don't actually know anything about the author, if there was any blurb about him in the book I've forgotten it over the actual book, but in any case I'd bet he's a fine guy in day to day life and not deserving of any trouble. (I am rather certain it's a he, though I don't recall his name.)
I also think it's fine to talk of the art and artist together, but it's not necessary, and usually less interesting, fruitful, or certain. But a sometimes-fun exercise in some fiction analysis can be: find the author's self-insert character. (That presupposes there is one, there sometimes isn't.) How sure are you that you've got it right? You should probably consult some information about the author themselves outside the art itself. And even then, is it a "complete insert", or a partial one, or one made of past regrets or future ideals or alternative paths, but not present bits?
While we're tossing light criticism about other people around in public, or as I'd put it just sharing opinions and viewpoints (this is not structured enough to be criticism), what comes to mind first for the three writers brought up is this: Maciej is funny even when he's wrong, pg is just insufferable when wrong, gwern is rarely wrong. I liked pg's older writing more, at some point he fell off and neither his tweets that occasionally surface to me nor his newer essays that I've bothered to read (last one I believe was "Good Writing") have left much of an impact or held my interest content-wise or style-wise. I haven't kept up with Maciej in tweet or other form since 2017 or so because I thought his content and style were repetitive and became boring (and wrong about things in ways that didn't invite counter argument or correction). My exposure to gwern's writing was IRC and LW comments from many years back, I've only read a fraction of his longer form work on his site but occasionally I'll read new things he puts out because he's still occasionally writing about new and interesting things. His style has never put me off, but sure, it's not routinely funny like I remember Maciej, and it lacks some sharpness and brevity that old-pg had. I still think it has personality, and a particular gwern-like personality even when it's in "classic style" mode that is shared by many other writers, but that might just be familiarity especially with his shorter form words.
And I still find gwern funny at times. This bit of fiction, for instance, has some amusing bits: https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy I wonder, does it satisfy your query of something as intriguing as "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice"? There are several ways that link can "make me care", though the web page layout can make it awkward. Is it the "clippy" in the URL, the official title "It Looks Like You’re Trying To Take Over The World", the one-sentence summary that just tells you it's a fictional short story about something, the two-sentence summary below that which says the same with a tiny bit more detail, the picture of Clippy, or the first lines of the actual text: "In A.D. 20XX. Work was beginning. “How are you gentlemen !!”… (Work. Work never changes; work is always hell.)"? Those first lines are distinctive video game references that even if one hasn't played the games, if one has been on the internet enough during a particular time then they'll likely ring a bell. The recognition of such signals is going to either act like crack ("One of us!") and draw the reader further in, or act as a repellent (quirk chungus) and bring forth a groan if not abandonment; I've been both kinds of reader for the same references. Meanwhile others won't get the references at all, it's just weird. Whether including such references indicates something meaningful about the author's personality directly, rather than just them being aware of the shibboleths and making use of them to attract and entertain a certain audience, is hard to say. Fans often end up with "don't meet your heroes" kinds of feelings when they over-empathized with their inferred construction of someone and thought they were part of the tribe rather than just making use of the tribe's signals.
Additionally I appreciate the extent to which our perceptions on literature differ. This was an enlightening exchange.
In an attempt to retain decorum between us I will withhold speculation on the character of (Mr?) Cameron Pierce whose work you made mention of.
But it's tough to resist. And boy, am I confident about it.
Thanks also for the pointer to James Mickens. And if I may ask, do you have a reference for where I may find Tolkien's remarks on the relation between the artist and his art?
I'm going to make a gross fusion out of two points you made that I enjoy in conjunction:
> And again, if you're not using outside sources, what you can infer about someone purely from the art, purely from the fact that they made something rather than nothing, and this particular something rather than something else, is more limited than what some people imagine. [...]
Those first lines are distinctive video game references that even if one hasn't played the games, if one has been on the internet enough during a particular time then they'll likely ring a bell. The recognition of such signals is going to either act like crack ("One of us!") and draw the reader further in, or act as a repellent (quirk chungus) and bring forth a groan if not abandonment; I've been both kinds of reader for the same references. Meanwhile others won't get the references at all, it's just weird. Whether including such references indicates something meaningful about the author's personality directly, rather than just them being aware of the shibboleths and making use of them to attract and entertain a certain audience, is hard to say. Fans often end up with "don't meet your heroes" kinds of feelings when they over-empathized with their inferred construction of someone and thought they were part of the tribe rather than just making use of the tribe's signals.
I think how we experience the phenomenon you describe in the second paragraph that I've appended above—the final one in your full response—is where we differ.
I can't help but use references like the ones you described above as data points to infer the personality of the author. It's an innate mental process that occurs concurrent to whatever else I think about while reading their work. And the world is filled with such data points even beyond ones that the author intentionally invites.
I'm probably more likely to expect that these references (that I consider to be outside sources; this may be irresponsible to you) are indicative of the nature of the author either directly or indirectly—that there is at least some genuine influence behind the reference of certain concepts, beliefs and shibboleths—because I don't read fiction the same way that I read non-fiction. Which is to say that I don't actually read fiction at all.
I do appreciate how certain fiction serves as literary representations of the ideas that the author has about the world (whether they're his own or those of other's that he wants to bring attention to) that they otherwise wouldn't express through non-fiction. So I do mine the work of some fiction authors for that kind of insight and nothing more; because my objective is to comprehend the diverse ways that people perceive life and the lives of others. Because of this I probably tend to interpret the effect of a piece of literature more seriously than others; in search of more intimate and perhaps more disquieting evaluations.
As you mentioned, sometimes the author is just trying to attract an audience. So that’s not to say that all references are worthy of as strong of a consideration that I’m describing. Maybe the fun part of this kind of work is vetting for authenticity—for better or worse—all things considered.
It's good of you to beware immature judgment lest you so be judged.
I didn't have a particular letter in mind but the topic comes up at various places in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, especially in his remarks about sub-creation. I decided to ctrl-f my digital copy and I'll point you to Letter 213 for a direct remark. It's 3 paragraphs, here's the first:
> I do not like giving 'facts' about myself other than 'dry' ones (which anyway are quite as relevant to my books as any other more Juicy details). Not simply for personal reasons; but also because I object to the contemporary trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors and artists. They only distract attention from an author's works (if the works are in fact worthy of attention), and end, as one now often sees, in becoming the main interest. But only one's guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the real relationship between personal facts and an author's works. Not the author himself (though he knows more than any investigator), and certainly not so-called 'psychologists'.
I'm in agreement with Tolkien here.
I wonder if you've ever read A Modest Proposal? If not: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm But if so I still wonder if you can put yourself in the frame of mind of not having read it and not knowing anything about it, and thus recreating an approximation for how you would read such a piece for the first time. What do you make of it? What do you make of Dr. Jonathan Swift? Do you have enough historical knowledge to put yourself in 1729 and interpret it as a person from that era, instead of our modern cynical and irony-poisoned one?
> It's good of you to beware immature judgment lest you so be judged.
A dear reminder best expressed by the second Caliph of the Islamic state Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنه: “Bring yourself to account before you are taken to account.”
I think I’ve come across both that quote of Tolkien’s before and I’m also vaguely familiar with A Modest Proposal, to the degree that after reading the subtitle I was reminded that it’s satire. I’m not sure how this will affect my reading of it but I intend to assign myself both Letter 213 of Tolkien’s letters and the whole of A Modest Proposal with the questions you presented in relation to it as homework! Thanks.
Edit: I also just found your blog and am subscribed to your RSS feed. “Hard Labor” is a nice read. It’s hard to come across this level of introspection that doesn’t go out of its way to appeal to an audience. Well I’m reading your stuff now. And I am judging you too! (Half joke).
>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.
> "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."
This is writing-as-bookselling and marketing. If you find your ideas interesting and want to write about them, it's not your job to show the reader why, you only expect readers who share your interest to be potential readers. You may not think the reader should be interested or should care at all?
>You may not think the reader should be interested or should care at all?
You can but that does not mean you should. If you write under such assumptions your writing will likely not be of much interest to people who don't share your interest, you will be preaching to a choir and much of the choir may be interested in a different aspect or care about it in a very different way than you do. Writing under such assumptions means your writing depends on those assumptions. No idea why you think this is writing-as-bookselling and marketing, preaching to the choir is almost always better for sales than trying to win over people who don't care and are uninterested.
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.
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.
I don't think we need to credit him or reconcile anything, what he says is not wrong or hypocritical, it is just his view of what makes a good blog post. I disagree with him but the only consequence for him is that I won't read his blog unless I feel compelled to because I want to join in the discussion on somewhere like HN and don't want to be one of those people who interjects into a discussion on an article they did not read, even if the conversation is clearly about the title and not the article or marginally related topics or I simply want to make a marginally related comment.
For me, it is the way he presents and develops ideas that prevents me from reading, it reminds me of reading a tutorial on how to reach his conclusion. Some people probably like the style, some probably don't care about the style, and some like me struggle to even skim a short post like TFA. But I find a great deal of what is on the internet to be difficult to read and think nothing of reading a book like Infinite Jest in a week. I am not the target audience.
We seem to be of like mind on this matter then. I look forward to us reconvening the next time Gwern hits the front page and we each feel compelled to voice some kind of informed dissent on the subject. Dissent probably isn’t the right word here because I don’t think either of us actually disagree with what he’s saying.
How fun is a conversation once it’s established that both parties are in agreement about something in principle? Does one probe to be provocative?
I place high expectations on writing that 1) I feel is right up my alley because I think I’m already familiar with the topic and 2) I’m unfamiliar with but am eager to learn about—it sparks my curiosity. Not all writing meets these expectations and this is probably why I’m disgusted by the though of using LLMs for information about subjects I have a genuine enthusiasm for and can care less about doing so for others, at least until I can figure out whether I want to know more about it. Then the subject becomes forbidden to prompt about.
> For me, it is the way he presents and develops ideas that prevents me from reading, it reminds me of reading a tutorial on how to reach his conclusion.
My assumption is that this kind of writing exists somewhere along the same strand of writing that lends itself to what’s expected from some writing in public school (‘Good writing is what shows the reader/teacher that you correctly grasped the material that was taught to you’); writing that is received well by ’The Masses™’ or some in-group (‘Good writing is what shows the reader/audience that you’re beliefs are in correct alignment with theirs’); something like a mathematical proof (a more literal representation of how to reach a conclusion if I correctly understand what a mathematical proof is); and a well-formed atomic note written for private consideration.
If your goal is communication, isn't being well received by the masses a very applicable measurement of good writing? David Foster Wallace's contribution to the world is primarily indirect, filtered down to the masses by "bad" writers who are more pragmatic about things and take into account that most people don't want to spend 1000 pages analyzing a topic, don't even want to spend 10 pages doing it, they want it boiled down to a simple choice so they can decide if it is of value to them, if it can improve their life and I can't blame or judge them for that. Wallace certainly did not blame them for it, just felt they should be conscious of why they came to a conclusion instead of blindly accepting it because it is their conclusion.
His general style is simple and direct, how we all learn to write essays in school. He writes his outline, diligently follows it while writing his draft, edits the draft and then publishes it. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad about this, I just would rather read something which explores the idea instead of makes an assertion about it, but he is writing about what he looks for in his reading. I would not call it good writing but I also would not call it bad, it is just uninteresting to me.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
I think I know the answer, but people don’t want to hear it. Gwern has a kind of formula/structure really effectively markets his blog to the HN audience, which is Not Bad Actually, just effective messaging + giving people what they want.
You can’t really separate the content from its medium, its contex, and its audience if you’re thinking about “why is this successful” (why does the medium express the content n a particular content that works for some particular audience). What the blog post is really about is not “writing” or creating good content per-se, but how to structure content for a blog-like/feed-based medium where you’re competing for clicks, views, attention, participation in external narratives, and relevancy/memorability with an audience mostly looking to be entertained or scratch some curiosity itch.
Gwern has a good formula for that which matched the HN context and audience:
1. Pique interest and grab attention. Give me a reason to click.
2. Let the reader in on the secret, you and me vs all these other idiots. Validate me.
3. Back it all up with sources/references and a post that articulates something the reader already was aware of but fundamentally agreed with. Teach me something but make me feel like “Finally someone who gets it” rather than challenged or threatened.
4. Do the work to actually deliver on the hook. Satisfy my curiosity and give me a reason to come back and share it.
None of this is even necessarily manipulative, it’s just the form that successfully competes in a click-driven market for attention and information (the context). Nobody has to click or read through or share or comment on the thing. Most likely very few will click through to the sources, but they might peep them or be interested to know that they exist. It’s very effective progressive disclosure.
The thing is, this audience REALLY does not want to believe that they can be marketed to or that their decision making is many ways pretty damn emotional/predictable. Gwern does an excellent job validating that for them AND successfully marketing to them anyway. I think that’s the part that’s missing from this post.
The context is completely non-captive, the audience wants to feel smart, and believes that they are “too smart to be marketed to”. Here they are scrolling through an attention market looking for interesting information that they need to be convinced to click, read through, share, and engage with. Why was the link shared and content created to being with, and how did it structure itself to fit its content/audience, and why does a particular structure/messaging work while others don't?
The word for all of that is Marketing. It's just a Good Thing when done right.
I think that's a very interesting, thoughtful response.
> You can’t really separate the content from its medium, its contex, and its audience
Yes, I completely agree.
> the audience wants to feel smart, and believes that they are “too smart to be marketed to”. Here they are scrolling through an attention market looking for interesting information that they need to be convinced to click, read through, share, and engage with. Why was the link shared and content created to being with, and how did it structure itself to fit its content/audience, and why does a particular structure/messaging work while others don't?
> The word for all of that is Marketing.
I think that overemphasizes the significance of a 'market'. 'Market' is used as a metaphor for many things, such as 'attention market', but also implies commercial, transactional, profit-oriented relationships, which don't seem like such strong motivations here (though I can't speak for the author). And to me your claims seem assume that the author's primary goal is more attention - they are in an 'attention market', they do all these things with intent to drive more page views.
They could have many other motivations. As a general concept, people love to share what they know, sort of like the drive to make FOSS. Maybe the author just loves to learn things and the blog posts provide an excuse; I've fallen into similar hobbies - without regret. Maybe they feel validated, or it relieves stress, or it's an escape from a job they hate, etc. There are so many possibilities in addition to commerce, attention, or profit.
I do agree that the HN "audience wants to feel smart, and believes that they are “too smart to be marketed to”." Those are the easiest people to persuade.
> each me something but make me feel like “Finally someone who gets it” rather than challenged or threatened.
Ironically, AI has been making me feel like this lately. But it taught me all of this (i.e. your exact point about the psycological levers employed by people/organizations who understand why stuff goes viral).
So is that real or am I just being successfully marketed to, now by AI.
I guess my meta-point is that "marketing" shouldn't be such a dirty word, because done well enough, it's effective communication that gives people what they want/helps them AND makes them feel good. My own comment basically does the same thing I said he did, lol.
The point of calling it marketing is that this blog post is explaining hooks, basic content marketing (ie be entertaining or interesting), progressive disclosure, and understanding your target audience: standard marketing concepts. You can find a lot of info if you research them by those terms.
Gwern's audience, in an ironic twist of fate, think that being marketed to = being tricked or manipulated by an evil person, so here he is explaining basic content marketing concepts to the people his blog is marketed towards, who hate marketing and believe themselves immune to it.
AI does the same thing to you because 1. most of the web is marketing 2. why shouldn't it be nice to you AND help you? 3. you keep coming back for more, right? And is that necessarily a bad thing?
I highly recommend a deep dive into signalling theory if you're interested in learning more, it's completely changed how I think about communication and behavior, even my own.
Sure, when it's fronting a great product, I have no issue with marketing. But it can be abused, which makes people suspicious (but not invulnerable as we know).
Anyway, I am currently in "lean in and find out" mode with AI :-)
Not quite at Gas Town yet but I've dropped a lot of baggage and willing to take a hike to try and find it.
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]
That's a great response; thanks. I would guess you are right that Gwern particularly appeals to the HN crowd, though that might be saying the obvious. Personally - and I don't think my perception is somehow superior to anyone else's - I think Gwern's writing has a clear voice.
> the entire page took approximately 13 seconds to to yield almost 12MB of data
13 seconds doesn't seem like much to me compared to the time required to read those pages. I think that objectively, it doesn't have any economic impact. But that is relativley slow.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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/, 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
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.
There are definitely less readable blogs, even restricting to ones that aren't intentionally hard to read. For example: 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.
I understand I’m behind in terminology in this space and figured that there at least would’ve been a post to make its way through HN that would explain what the “Atmosphere” is. Apparently this submission was supposed to be that (5 days ago) but it doesn’t define the concept.
> The "Atmosphere" is the term we use to describe the ecosystem around the AT Protocol.
I think that ATProto is going to win against other decentralized/‘fediverse' protocols in the long run. Bluesky? Maybe not. But I am impressed by the look of other platforms like Leaflet and that one that’s supposed to be an alternative to GitHub or something like that. [1]
I can’t speak on the tech behind the protocol itself but as far as marketing is considered it’s in the lead in my opinion. ActivityPub seems too gangly and Nostr is the worst—as in 'worse is better’—and in a way I’m fond of it because of that.
The planning behind ATProto appears to be far more coordinated than the other two. Despite being the senior of the three, ActivityPub is still going through inter-platform drama (e.g., the Instagram clone that was recently condemned for not handling text-only posts...like an Instagram clone should) and I get the feeling that the mind behind Nostr can care less about coordinating. I look at it more like a toolkit to build a protocol out of than a single one akin to the other two. [2]
[1]: This is my first look at OffPrint. It looks too much like Substack. I hate it. But I figure that the beautiful thing is that in theory I can use Leaflet and you can use OffPrint and I guess our writing is all in the same...atmosphere. Hah.
[2]: Similar to another web project that I’m fond of, Datastar.
(I felt the same way when I read this paragraph and the one about Jack being a target of abuse but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to ‘dang’ a ‘dang’ thread. At the same time it is touching how Jack has forged some semblance of a real world community out of this. I still can’t take what he does serious as a whole and I’m not warm to the idea that the “World’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok” and I do have a sort of apathy toward the cultural intrigue borne from people in their twenties today. Like dang I was expecting a hit piece and was no less impressed to find it the opposite—fluff. Both poignant in some ways and pathetic in most per my own sensibilities.)
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