Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

>How can you ensure that the things you say are true and novel and important? Believe it or not, there is a trick for doing this. I learned it from my friend Robert Morris, who has a horror of saying anything dumb. His trick is not to say anything unless he's sure it's worth hearing. This makes it hard to get opinions out of him, but when you do, they're usually right.

How is this useful? How do I say things that are true,novel,important. Oh well, only say things that you're sure they're 'worth hearing' - where presumably, worth hearing is defined as being true, novel and important.

This seems like quite a solipsistic view of essay writing. If everyone knew how useful their writing was before anyone else read it then the problem he's describing wouldn't exist. No one would choose to publish bad things - the problem is people publish bad things because they don't know they're bad until other people have pointed out why.

All this is really doing is arguing for a bias against publishing - have a high threshold, as a result lots of good ideas will go unpublished, but the few that do get published will make you look good. Is that actually a good solution to provide the most value to the people reading, or is that a good solution to maintain your reputation?

I know several people who keep silent until they can say something clever, and frankly, in most group situations they stand out as being slightly weird. Keeping your intellectual powder dry is just not a socially 'giving' behaviour. What's wrong with saying something that's not clever? Within a group, it might send the conversation off in a delightfully unanticipated direction. There's more to it all than always being right. Or clever.

There’s a difference between interpersonal social behavior and publishing written work, though.

Yes, that's why the paragraph after the one under discussion starts out, "Translated into essay writing...". So the paragraph discussed in this thread is about interpersonal social behavior.

Ah, yes, thank you. Though as far as I can tell, it’s brought up, not in the context of saying that it’s a successful strategy for having engaging dinner parties, but in the context of saying it’s a good strategy for writing essays.

That's something I learned in my 20s that I wish I'd learned as a child.

i do this. it's not because i want to sound clever but because i have nothing of importance to say about the subject. and i can usually see if you don't either but won't tell you.

i't did not served me great in social circles but honestly as im aging am more ok with that. i don't have to have an opinion about everything or hang out with everybody.

> Within a group, it might send the conversation off in a delightfully unanticipated direction.

Or a not so delightfully unanticipated direction. Too many times I've realized too late that I was in a "hostile" group, so I say something stupid thinking I'm among friends and it's like switching a button on the group mood.

Then you've discovered something extremely valuable about that group

Sure, but as a result I've grown more and more cautious about relaxing my guard which has made me more and more quiet in social situations.

Hopefully it helps to recognize the beneficial outcome of your action (which I pointed out). I've been there, so I'm trying to help.

Eh, I think it depends. I wouldn’t go out of my way to socialize with people who are uptight and easily offended or upset by dumb shit that I might say in a casual social setting, but most of us get roped into those situations from time to time, and being able to manage them without causing offense is worthwhile, even if you can only do that by being quiet.

PG never justifies this, and just claims that "with essay writing, publication bias is the way to go." There are a huge number of essayists that I have the option to read. I would prefer to read each of their best thoughts, rather than read more of their thoughts.

In my life, Twitter is for hot takes, and Feedly is for deep thoughts.

You actually agree with him then. He's referring to publication bias coming from only publishing your best essays.

I've interpreted this as to hold back on publishing your thoughts until you actually are confident in what your thoughts are.

I have a habit of forming my ideas in emails before I know the conclusion. It's important to edit that work and remove the dead ends and keep it concise. It's important to keep it useful.

I guess what he's saying is if you still don't know the conclusion of your writing, maybe you shouldn't publish it.

This of course is writing for the benefit of the reader. There is plenty of writing which is beneficial to the writer.

I assume Mr Morris would have kept that gem to himself.

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