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Comment by wanderer2323 | Hacker News Reader

PG is apropos for this forum, but beyond that he is plainly a good writer. I don't know who you consider 'amazing writers across our civilization' -- but whether it is Gracian or Scott Alexander, PG shares one thing with them, namely that his works will be quoted beyond the lifespan of his contemporary readers.

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The presumption that Scott Alexander will be quoted long beyond his lifespan really drives home how much of a bubble this site can be at times.

Indeed. How many people know who HL Mencken is?

Alexander is a good writer, and I appreciate how he is able to tackle assumptions and challenge mainstream opinions, and does so systematically.

But he's writing 10 pages of what could be summed up in 10 bullet points.

The intellectual collateral is nice, but he's not really breaking new ground, and I'm not sure what he's going to share with the next generation of readers

Mencken gets quoted pretty regularly in my circles :shrug:

Alexander is extremely difficult to get clear quotes out of - pithy sentences that would fit in a tweet, for example.

It's impossible to know for certain, of course, but it seems highly unlikely that any of those writers will be quoted beyond the lifespan of contemporary readers (except potentially in scholarly books about rationalism/startups/etc). How many authors from the 1940s are still widely read, especially for essays/non-fiction?

Excepting the WWII memoirs (because I'm not sure how I want to count either Anne Frank, Elie Weisel or Winston Churchill in terms of "authors from the 1940s"), among authors whose nonfiction works are still read, there are a few names that do occur to me:

George Orwell, Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, John Maynard Keynes, Jean-Paul Sartre

For fiction there are obviously many more whose works have come through to frequent readership: Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Albert Camus, C.S. Lewis, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Ayn Rand to name a few.

Lewis would be my example for nonfiction. Narnia is fun and all, but it's stuff like "The Inner Ring" (https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/) where he really shines.

Normally I wouldn't comment just to say the equivalent of +1, but I hadn't encountered "The Inner Ring" before, and it's great! Thanks for the recommendation.

I agree (Planet Narnia also blew my mind), but I tried to make a judgement call over whether his non-fiction was "widely read" (I know very few people who have read any of it, relative to the number who have read the Narnia books).

He’s a good writer in that he’s able to convince people who know next to nothing about the subject matter that he is making good points. Neither history nor economics agree with his hand waving statements.

I don't think that merely being a good writer will allow him to be "quoted beyond the lifespan of his contemporary readers." I agree with OP that I really don't see anything special about his writings, compared even with contemporary writers on technology like RMS.

He's good at rhetoric. The writing is simple with one point per paragraph and requires a low reading age.

It has a single and consistently repeated/implied message without any deviations or uncertainties.

All of that makes it persuasive.

But factually it's mostly wrong.

I'm not going to through it point by point to pick all the inaccuracies about the continuing influence of inherited wealth on success, or the unrealistically rosy implication of small business riches.

I'll just suggest everyone should research for themselves the real survival rates for small businesses, the small business sectors with the best long-term viability, the age group most active in creating new businesses, and the number of tech startups that makes any return at all to investors.

Of all the things posted on this site, this is the comment that is the most wrong. If his writings are ever quoted again after his death, it will be meant as sarcasm.

> namely that his works will be quoted beyond the lifespan of his contemporary readers

I have never seen PG quoted anywhere, not even on HN.

I see the quote "Do things that don't scale" often enough

I see people quoting him occasionally. They're always mocking him and this site though.

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