[HN Gopher] First, make me care
___________________________________________________________________
First, make me care
Author : andsoitis
Score : 759 points
Date : 2026-01-25 19:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gwern.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gwern.net)
| huhkerrf wrote:
| "First, make me care" is exactly right. But I also know that
| anytime you have narrative non-fiction on here, someone without
| fail argues that the author didn't get straight into the details.
| some_furry wrote:
| Know your audience: Technical people want the details.
|
| Most people aren't technical.
| sublinear wrote:
| This is why good writing on the web is broken up into multiple
| posts split by concern, and with links to the others at the top
| of the article.
|
| The real problem is when they SEO the shit out of it and
| replace those links with irrelevant trash meant to steal your
| attention and people only want to share the "make me care"
| posts.
|
| The writers stop bothering even posting details when they have
| them. They bury the lede because it's what the "make me care"
| crowd forces them to do.
| acc077877 wrote:
| Someone may have already been curious about the topic
| beforehand. I'm guessing they already have some kind of itch or
| curiosity. For example, someone who is interested in reading a
| dense technical textbook that gets straight into the details
| likely has a preexisting question waiting to be answered, which
| is why they care. That's what motivates them to keep reading,
| even when the material jumps directly into the details
| furyofantares wrote:
| My personal distaste for typical narrative presentations of
| interesting information is how often the first interesting
| details come 4-5 paragraphs in and then are slowly peppered
| from there. Really doesn't seem at odds with the advice here
| which can easily be applied to the opening sentence or
| paragraph, and title.
| simonw wrote:
| This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that
| platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention
| of your audience before they skip to the next video.
|
| You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever
| because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is
| heavily used by other accounts.
|
| This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human
| psychology, with literally millions of people all trying to find
| the right hooks to catch attention and constantly evolving and
| iterating on them as the previous hooks stop being effective.
| tombert wrote:
| This is part of why I hate TikTok so much.
|
| I recently started doing SiriusXM again a lot. The reason I do
| this is actually _specifically_ because it gives me less choice
| than something like Spotify or YouTube Music.
|
| A lot of time when I do the autoplay of YouTube Music, if I
| don't like the song in the first 15-20 seconds, I skip it to
| something else. I eventually realized that a lot of songs that
| I end up really liking require you listening to the entire song
| to come together. The inability to skip to the next song on
| SiriusXM forces me to listen to the song, and I've found a ton
| of songs that I likely would have otherwise skipped with
| anything else.
|
| I feel like with TikTok, we're effectively training ourselves
| to ignore things that don't immediately grab our attention.
|
| Maybe this is just my "Old Man Yells At Cloud" moment though.
| squigz wrote:
| Check out KEXP and SomaFM. KEXP in particular is a great way
| to discover new music that you might not normally listen to.
|
| https://www.kexp.org/
|
| https://somafm.com/
| keyringlight wrote:
| I'd say streaming radio in general is low profile in how it
| lets you discover new things. I use the search/directory
| built into foobar2000 or apps like radiodroid, but there
| are sites like https://www.radio-browser.info/ for the web.
| It's an interesting and low cost way to find things you
| wouldn't otherwise be exposed to and likely curated by
| whoever is running the station. What really stood out to me
| is how different countries or regions have their own
| tastes, or at least are likely to be playing something
| different to local broadcasts.
| bsder wrote:
| The problem I have with streaming radio is that it seems
| to be caught rehashing rather than discovering.
|
| For example, I like SOMA's Underground 80s, but I also
| want to hear new artists in the same vein. I haven't
| found any streaming stations that are actively good at
| curating like this.
|
| Where are the streaming stations that play Smiths and
| Smithereens but also play Blossoms and Johnny Marr's new
| stuff, for example?
| squigz wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I specifically called out KEXP for this,
| as they do lots of live shows, themed segments, etc, that
| really do enable discovery.
|
| Unfortunately you're quite right about Soma (and probably
| other streaming radio) - but I imagine licensing new
| music can be difficult/expensive.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Also adding Radio Paradise, apparently one of the first
| online radios (https://radioparadise.com/). That said, it
| _does_ have a skip (and pause) mechanism, so if you really
| don 't like something you can skip to the next one.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > I recently started doing SiriusXM again a lot. The reason I
| do this is actually specifically because it gives me less
| choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music.
|
| No, I think you're right.
|
| I'm old enough to have swapped pirated cassettes of whatever
| was doing the rounds in high school. I remain convinced that
| Appetite for Destruction can only be listened to the way it
| was intended to be heard, if it's been copied onto a ratty
| old TDK D90 that's been getting bashed around in your
| schoolbag for months by your mate's big brother who has the
| CD and a decent stereo.
|
| There's a lot of stuff I listened to that I probably wouldn't
| have if I'd had the selection that's available on streaming
| services. When you got a new tape, that was Your New Tape,
| and you listened to it over and over because you hadn't heard
| it a thousand times yet. Don't like it? Meh, play it anyway,
| because you haven't heard it a thousand times yet.
|
| I got into so much music that's remained important to me
| because of a chance tape swap.
|
| Maybe Spotify et al needs instead of unskippable adverts,
| unskippable tunes that are way outside your usual range of
| tastes. "Here have some 10,000 Maniacs before you go back to
| that R'n'B playlist!"
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, similar for me; when I was a teenager I would buy a
| CD specifically I liked a single on the radio and put it in
| my car. I would be too lazy to take it out and listen to
| something else, so I'd listen to that CD dozens and dozens
| of times, and I would grow to appreciate the non-single
| songs a lot, very often more than the song I even bought
| the CD for.
|
| The non-singles are generally a lot less "radio-friendly",
| almost by definition, so a lot of artists were more willing
| to try stuff that is a little less immediately-appealing,
| and there are a bunch of albums I have basically memorized
| now because of that.
|
| With Spotify and YouTube Music, there's an infinite number
| of songs to choose from and as a result you never have the
| same excuse to listen to the same songs over and over
| again. I'm not necessarily saying it's "worse", just that I
| miss the way it used to be.
| arctic-true wrote:
| Now there's an idea. You could get artists to pay for ads
| just like other advertisers, and instead of hearing an ad
| for a product that takes you completely out of music mode,
| you have to listen to a whole song (or the first minute, or
| whatever) that's maybe a little outside your usual mix.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Everything old is new again. This is called Payola and
| it's illegal in the radio industry.
| sznio wrote:
| I went back to CDs because the friction of having to stand
| up, walk to the player and change the disc is enough to stop
| me from skipping songs every few seconds.
|
| For discovering new music, I go to the flea market every so
| often and buy some random discs. Some are unlistenable, but a
| lot are alright. I found New Mind[1] this way and really
| loved it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sharp#New_Mind
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| This is part of why I like vinyl, you can't even really
| choose a track, you just listen. (the other part is that my
| vinyl collection is about 80% from my parents, and its just
| cool personally to have the same physical copy of the media
| that they did)
|
| Also, many libraries still have CD collections. In the pre-
| iphone days I used to max out my library account getting
| CDs, rip/copy the ones I liked, and repeat.
| cpt_sobel wrote:
| > less choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music
|
| For the same reason (plus curiosity of what people are
| listening to in weird places) I recently switched to Radio
| Garden [0], highly recommend it (not affiliated)
|
| [0] https://radio.garden
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's so addictive but so soul destroying. I feel dirty after
| spending time on that platform. The term brainrot fits
| perfectly.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| I've started using these platforms for learning (stretch
| exercises, argentine tango patterns/musicality I might want
| to lead, etc) and am finding the experience to work better in
| those kinds of situations. Agree it can be brain rot if using
| it for entertainment, politics, etc.
| ericmcer wrote:
| It is still doing the same thing, the dopamine hit is just
| feeling like you learned something instead of seeing
| something funny/shocking/etc.
|
| The idea you can gain any kind of actual
| experience/knowledge about a thing through a series of 30s
| clips that are competing with millions of other 30s clips
| to grab you is folly.
| xandrius wrote:
| Honest question: why wouldn't you simply search for exactly
| the same things but on longer format platforms such as
| YouTube?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| TikTok isn't about searching, it's about tuning the
| algorithm to find just the things you want, without
| necessarily being explicit about what you want.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Why short form though? I've always learned much better from
| long form, more comprehensive videos. Or I guess to put it
| another way I don't believe I've ever learned anything
| besides quick hacks on reels/shorts/tiktok. Not even quick
| guitar licks.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| To respond to everyone at once -
|
| I have experience and teachers so I'm not solely relying on
| these videos. I use the short videos as a fast discovery of
| what's out there and I'll sometimes watch long videos
| afterward. LLM sites also work well for this discovery and
| I use that sometimes but it is a bit more work from me
| (which sounds strange to write re: AI) because I have to
| type out what I want instead of relying on algorithms that
| use data collected about me.
|
| I use Facebook Reels (rather thank TikTok) which show me
| stuff anyway after I click on a link shared by friends so
| having it show me things relevant to learning seems like
| the best option here in case I click on next video.
| something765478 wrote:
| Yeah, I had to get rid of my youtube plus subscription
| because I was getting too addicted to the shorts.
| munificent wrote:
| Wait until a generation of people who have been mainlining
| that since infancy while their thought patterns were still
| being formed becomes old enough to vote.
| saghm wrote:
| Oh no, will they elect a president who primarily operates
| in ragebait, heavily uses social media, and has no
| meaningful attention span for anything outside of receiving
| direct praise? Good thing we have such enlightened voters
| right now who would never for someone that!
| munificent wrote:
| Right, so imagine something _even worse_ than the current
| state of affairs.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Pretty sure it destroys something in you as well. So many
| context changes with no relation whatsoever and regular hooks
| that give you a pinch.
|
| We haven't evolved for that. Our brain is trying to figure out
| a narrative between two things following each other. It needs
| time to process stuff. And there is so much shock it can absorb
| at once. So many "?!" and open loops in a day.
|
| I made a TikTok account to at least know what people were
| talking about. After 3 months, I got it.
|
| And I deleted it.
|
| I felt noticeably worse when using it, in a way that nothing
| bad for me, including the news, refined sugar and pron, ever
| made me feel. The destruction was more intense, more
| structural. I could feel it gnarling.
|
| In a way, such fast feedback is good, because it makes it easy
| to stop, while I'm still eating tons of refined sugar.
| rmunn wrote:
| Thirty years ago, I read a book called _Amusing Ourselves to
| Death_ by Neil Postman, in which he made very similar points
| about broadcast television. I don 't remember all his points,
| but I vividly remember how talked about how you'll be
| watching a news story about something awful, maybe an
| earthquake in which hundreds of people died, and then with
| practically no warning you'll be hearing a happy jingle from
| a toothpaste commercial. The juxtaposition, he said, was bad
| for the human mind, and was going to create a generation that
| couldn't focus on important things.
|
| I suspect that the rapid-fire progression of one one-minute
| video after another does something similar, and is also
| equally bad for you.
| noahjk wrote:
| I've noticed that I can read or see something very
| emotionally engaging - something that really resonates with
| me, so much so that I'm maybe even choking up over it - and
| while I'm still having that emotional response, move onto
| the next post. I almost always have a moment of meta-
| reflection that scares me - why wasn't I content to just
| sit there and process these big emotions? How is the
| dopamine part of my brain so much more powerful than even
| the emotional part, that it forces me to continue what I'm
| doing rather than just _feeling_?
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| The same is true with the "In other news..." technique of
| seguing to the next story: its end result is overall
| desensitization and passive consumption.
| andai wrote:
| >TikTok [is] a fascinating brute-force attack on human
| psychology
|
| Security researcher once told me that he sees social media as a
| distributed hacking attempt on the human mind.
|
| I think it's a genetic algorithm. You try random stuff and when
| something works you clone and mutate and crossbreed it.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Isn't this pretty much the definition of a meme? I mean
| before meme just became synonymous with funny cat videos.
| Like the actual meaning of the word.
| komali2 wrote:
| Snow Crash explored this much more literally, supposing
| that there may be memes so powerful they can function
| basically as magic spells that reprogram people's brains.
| shawn_w wrote:
| See also John Barnes' Century Next Door books, where
| "memes" are basically computer viruses that jump to
| running on human brains, not just silicon chips. The
| results are... not pretty.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| My favorite example is actually one that I believe could
| be true[0]: self-reinforcing cycles of human conflict,
| that resemble the life cycle of a parasite. From an old
| (2014) SlateStarCodex essay[1]. Some of it is going to be
| controversial read today[2], so I'll just give you the
| relevant "money quote" from the end:
|
| <quote>
|
| What would it mean for a meme to have a life cycle as
| complicated as toxoplasma?
|
| Consider the war on terror. They say that every time the
| United States bombs Pakistan or Afghanistan or somewhere,
| all we're doing is radicalizing the young people there
| and making more terrorists. Those terrorists then go on
| to kill Americans, which makes Americans get very angry
| and call for more bombing of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
|
| Taken as a meme, it's a single parasite with two hosts
| and two forms. In an Afghan host, it appears in a form
| called 'jihad', and hijacks its host into killing himself
| in order to spread it to its second, American host. In
| the American host it morphs in a form called 'the war on
| terror', and it hijacks the Americans into giving their
| own lives (and tax dollars) to spread it back to its
| Afghan host in the form of bombs.
|
| From the human point of view, jihad and the War on Terror
| are opposing forces. From the memetic point of view,
| they're as complementary as caterpillars and butterflies.
| Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we
| accidentally created a replicator, and replicators are
| going to replicate until something makes them stop.
|
| </quote>
|
| --
|
| [0] - In whatever sense models are "true", i.e. a nice
| way to describe reality, that's succinct and has good
| predictive power, or something.
|
| [1] - https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/The-
| Toxoplasma-Of-Rag...
|
| [2] - Which is _not_ the same thing as saying it turned
| out wrong.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| For more ideas - One can definitely see multigenerational
| patterns of abuse and trauma as self reproducing
| parasites.
| iterateoften wrote:
| Also the most successful parasites have defense
| mechanisms to protect it. The process of radicalization
| and cultural heritage in general is a type of defense to
| make sure the parasite survives.
| adolph wrote:
| Vervaeke makes a claim of parasitism explicit in the
| Meaning Crisis series. We call this
| Parasitic Processing because it's like a parasite in that
| it takes up life within you, and it takes life
| away from you! It causes you to lose your agency.
| It causes you to suffer. And here's what's important.
| This capacity for your cognitive brain to be self
| organizing, heuristic using, complexify, to create
| complex systems and functions with emergent abilities,
| has a downside to it. This is a complex, self-
| organising, adaptive system! If you try and intervene
| here the rest of the system reorganizes itself around
| your attempted intervention. It can adapt and
| preserve itself as you tried to destroy it. Why?
| Because it's making use of the very machinery by which
| You adapt, and make use of the things that are
| trying to destroy You!
|
| https://www.meaningcrisis.co/ep-13-awakening-from-the-
| meanin...
| horacemorace wrote:
| There are malicious ads linked from that site. Do not
| recommend.
| adolph wrote:
| My apologies, I use an ad blocker and did not notice. The
| website is a transcript of the YouTube lecture series and
| can be found there if people wish to delve further.
| Unfortunately I no longer have an edit option on the
| comment.
| naasking wrote:
| > Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we
| accidentally created a replicator, and replicators are
| going to replicate until something makes them stop.
|
| I think this was kind of known for a long time, and
| pithily described in the well known phrase, "an eye for
| an eye makes the whole world blind".
| Root_Denied wrote:
| The SCP Foundation pages[0] have something similar, a
| danger classification for "Memetic Hazards" which are
| basically informational viruses that affect memory,
| cognition, and perception.
|
| [0] - https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/understanding-memetics
| mr_toad wrote:
| Dawkins original definition was an idea that replicated
| _unchanged_ , in an analogy to a gene, which is essentially
| a unit of DNA small enough to replicate unchanged.
| rcxdude wrote:
| _mostly_ unchanged (or rather, unchanged _most_ of the
| time). Mutations still happen and are necessary for
| evolution.
| noduerme wrote:
| Attention-seeking is indeed the original genetic algorithm.
| ericmcer wrote:
| There almost is no hook, the hook is that the time investment
| for each video is so small your brain doesn't even need to
| think about whether it should watch or not.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And the other factor is I think the "rat pulling a lever"
| thing.
|
| A rat is in a lab, pulls a lever, treat comes out, nom. Pulls
| again, treat comes out, nom. Pulls again... no treat. Pulls
| again, treat comes out, nom. This goes on, 10 pulls with no
| treat, but sometimes something comes out so the rat keeps
| going. You get the idea.
|
| This is a lot of social media. You end up scrolling through a
| lot of shit, adverts and subtle propaganda, passively
| absorbing it until you get rewarded with something you
| genuinely enjoy and get the good hormones from.
| kmoser wrote:
| > This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that
| platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention
| of your audience before they skip to the next video.
|
| Before TikTok, the YouTube "hook" was to choose the right image
| thumbnail that would entice people to click on your video.
| There was a time when YouTube didn't let you select a
| thumbnail; they would automatically select an image from a
| certain time in the video, so producers adapted by filming
| their videos so the most visually engaging moment came at that
| time.
| rossant wrote:
| Fifteen years ago, I ran a YouTube channel with hundreds of
| obscure French videos about pediatrics and parenting. One of
| them suddenly attracted massive attention worldwide,
| especially from Pakistan and Indonesia. According to the
| stats, 99% of the viewers were male. Millions and millions of
| views. For months, it sat in the top five French videos on
| YouTube. Ad revenue went through the roof, like three figures
| per day, for months, from that single video. None of the
| others on the channel saw anything remotely similar. It was
| baffling.
|
| Then I understood why. The automatic thumbnail generator had
| picked a frame from the exact middle of the two-minute video.
| It showed a close-up of a newborn heel prick test: a nurse
| firmly holding the baby's heel and pricking it to collect a
| drop of blood for routine postnatal genetic screening. The
| thumbnail frame looked like a skin-colored cylinder grasped
| by a woman's hand.
|
| Thankfully, the flood of comments, expressing disgust and
| horror at a medical procedure on a newborn after viewers had
| expected something entirely different, did not prevent the
| algorithm from enthusiastically recommending that thumbnail
| to a significant fraction of humanity.
| sizzle wrote:
| That's really actually hilarious and would probably get
| your account flagged by AI for showing obscenity or
| something nowadays.
| ctoth wrote:
| Attention is all you need, after all.
|
| On its own, this is interesting. But when you consider that
| people actually need attention for things like their jobs, the
| road, their children, &c... it starts to sort of look a bit
| like a superweapon.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And when propaganda is injected into it - subtly, through
| many channels and methods - it becomes worse. I'm confident
| that the western world's rightward shift is down to targeted
| social media campaigns. It doesn't help that said social
| media stopped checking for fake news and bent the knees to
| said rightward shift, because money.
| klustregrif wrote:
| > You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever
|
| That seems to be exactly what succesfull acounts are doing.
| They go a year or two creating content in a theme and then find
| that one hook that makes people stay a second to see what heir
| content is and then their entire personality and content
| becomes that one hook repeated until naseum and no matter what
| they do to try to escape it it's impossible since they don't
| control their content exposure newcommers will aways be flooded
| in a repeat storm of that same hook, and people who get tired
| will move on no matter what. So the only reliable way of trying
| to "pivot" to anything else is to create a new account, but
| that's going to get you back at the start with no guarentee
| that you'll have another hit in the next 2 years, so they just
| accept their fate as "the cucumber guy" or "the funny outfit
| girl" and then ride that as far towards the sunset as possible.
| rrvsh wrote:
| Yeah, I instantly disagreed with that point in the comment
| you replied to - TikTok's algorithm seems to reward sticking
| to your niche.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Does TikTok even have persistent personalities of this type?
| I thought a big part of the service was its recommendation
| algorithm that will keep recommending you _other_ new stuff,
| not just reruns of the same influencers.
| Aryezz wrote:
| It's both. Since most videos are a couple minutes long at
| most, and a TikTok doomscrolling session can last for
| hours, the algorithm can show you all the new videos you
| haven't seen of accounts you seem to enjoy (or are
| following), and a ton of new stuff as well.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| This definitely seems true to me, from my limited short
| content usage. I try to avoid getting sucked into the feed
| (Youtube Shorts is the one I have used), but if I do find
| myself scrolling through the morass of clips from Shark Tank
| or Family Guy [1], the one guy I'll almost always stop for is
| FunkFPV, who just does a duet on clips of stupid "hacks" and
| incidences of dumb stuff happening in factory / warehouse /
| construction settings.
|
| He's just a blue-collar type guy who is mildly funny when
| critiquing the stupidity of, say, a guy walking up a badly
| placed ladder with a mini split condenser on his shoulder -
| but it's a niche that for whatever reason I enjoy, and I
| don't think I'd remember his handle if it wasn't for his very
| specific niche.
|
| Interestingly enough [2] I've noticed a number of other
| creators seem to have sprung up in this niche and will
| occasionally find a video of some other blue-collar-lookin-
| dude doing the same schtick. I doubt FunkFPV is the first (in
| fact he sort of reminds me of an "AvE-lite") to tap this
| weird market, but he's my touchpoint, at least.
|
| [1]: Yes, it _is_ embarrassing that the algorithm has
| determined that these are likely to garner my attention
|
| [2]: it's actually not really _interesting_ because almost
| nothing on the topic of short-form video is actually
| interesting by any reasonable definition of that word, so
| this is just a turn of phrase
| alexdobrenko wrote:
| yes except all of this stuff...fundementally sucks, right?
| its why influencers generally don't become actors. there's
| very little depth to it. Versus for example Hank and John
| Green who sure, they have good hooks, but they also have
| depth?
|
| idk can't tell if this is me hoping or coping
| noumenon1111 wrote:
| Hello! My name is Xandiloquence Bizarre the Ab3rd, and today
| I will make a hat entirely out of dried cucumber.
| amelius wrote:
| Except the hooks only attach to the lizard brain while the
| rational brain just sits there with a palm in its face.
| nsbk wrote:
| There is no lizard brain. The "triune brain" theory has been
| debunked by modern neuroscience for years.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| "You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever"
|
| Biology tends to disagree.
| galkk wrote:
| > You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever
|
| Hmm. I feel exact opposite. Most of successful channels that i
| see are using exact same formula/structure/often even style
| time and time again.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| > You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever
| because people will get bored of it
|
| Isn't that the most followed user on TikTok Khaby Lame (his
| facial expression)? Looks like he just sold his company for
| $900M.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Damn, I'm in the wrong industry.
|
| I think it's different for tiktok (as a non-tiktok user so
| take this with a huge grain of salt lmao), people don't watch
| one creator's videos one after the other, they get put in the
| big soup of clips that people scroll through for sometimes
| hours a day. And a lot of that is people sticking to one
| formula, because for many, the predictability is comforting /
| puts them in the tiktok brain off frame of mind.
|
| Which isn't a new phenomenon - lots of people have "comfort
| shows" on e.g. Netflix, often the studio series with long
| seasons like sitcoms. They're comfortable because they often
| maintain a similar energy or formula over their run time, and
| missing parts of it (like current-day episodic films) isn't a
| big issue.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is leaking to loads of other media too - movie trailers
| have started with some quick action shots, then BIG text saying
| "trailer starts now". Like a trailer to a trailer. Which is
| released after a teaser for a trailer. They even have recurring
| sound effects (vine boom sounds, but movie trailer edition
| where every action event (explosion, punch, scene change) is
| accentuated with a distinct drum boom sound effect, often in
| time with the dramatized remix of recognisable music). I hate
| it lol.
|
| As for tiktok / other short video clip format content, one
| trend I've seen is to start the video with the conclusion (e.g.
| someone falling over), then starting with the buildup. Since
| these videos are played on loop anyway, they trick the viewer
| into thinking they missed the buildup.
| sevenseacat wrote:
| How I hate the trend of videos like YouTube shorts to almost
| show the punchline of the video at the start before the full
| video.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's not limited to Shorts, even normal longform videos
| have had this crap for years now. I hate it too -
| fortunately SponsorBlock can take care of this, they have
| optional categories you can enable beyond just sponsors,
| including the "hook".
|
| I was looking into making an automatic detector for this
| kind of thing (basically detect if anything in the first
| ~30 seconds repeats itself later in the video, and if so
| mark it) but my DSP skills aren't up to the task (and turns
| out LLMs are useless for these kinds of novel tasks).
| andai wrote:
| In my experience an LLM could probably handle this. And
| it's not so novel. They can make an image stitcher which
| is basically the same problem.
|
| It would probably need to download the whole video first
| though, so I'm not sure it would work as an extension.
| And analysing all frames would be expensive upfront. (If
| you're using it interactively and waiting for a video to
| start playing.)
|
| You might be able to get away with just looking for
| repetition in the audio.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Yeah my point was to download videos in bulk and scan
| them to then mark these segments in Sponsorblock.
|
| LLMs failed to produce any kind of performant solution.
| storystarling wrote:
| Generative models feel like the wrong abstraction here. I
| would try extracting keyframes and running them through
| CLIP or SigLIP to get embeddings. Then you can just do
| vector search to match the segments. Much lighter on
| compute.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I was talking to get LLMs to write the code or come up
| with an approach. I agree that the resulting solution
| does not need any kind of LLMs or even ML.
| psychoslave wrote:
| I wonder what proportion of people find things like TikTok,
| YouTube shorts, and even Twitter for the text counterpart,
| absolutely repulsive. It's not even disdain as in "I'm too good
| for this", more like some people can't stand the view of a
| spider I guess.
|
| And other things like HN can definitely hook my mind.
| duxup wrote:
| > You can't just find one hook that works
|
| Is that true?
| wodow wrote:
| > You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it
| forever...
|
| I would be interested in a study on how long popular accounts
| do use their one hook -- or set of hooks, or rotate them...
| slumberlust wrote:
| We have these answers already. At least the successful tubers
| like Mr. beast do. They ab test everything. That super creepy
| saturated image of him? Works really really well.
| RGamma wrote:
| This description leaves me feeling _blandly horrified_.
| abustamam wrote:
| I don't personally use tiktok but I have friends who will send
| me tiktok videos. I can't stand the dancing ones but the ones I
| usually end up watching through tend to be the ones that get
| right to the point. I wouldn't call it a hook, I'd just say it
| respects the viewer's time, which I like.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| This was quite a good article. It could have been excellent if it
| answered its own hook somewhere the piece though.
|
| I came away not having a resolution to the hook - violating the
| articles second principle.
| makeitrain wrote:
| I can't click on any links on pages (the header works).
|
| Using brave on iPhone.
|
| Firefox and Safari works...
| skybrian wrote:
| Suppose you fed this article into an LLM, along with whatever
| other documents you had, and asked it to come up with some good
| candidates for opening sentences? And picked one, and let it take
| it from there?
|
| I assume you'd get a mess, but it might be an interesting mess.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I think "Just... start with the interesting part first" is quite
| different, and actually much better advice than "make me care".
| I'm more than done with stupid hooks and attention grabbing
| techniques, just plainly and honestly state at the outset what
| the point is of what will follow.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah, there are two basic schools.
|
| 1. Broadcast what the article is about to let the interested
| readers find it easier
|
| 2. Trick people into reading as much of the article as possible
| through any means
|
| The first makes sense if you want readers. The second makes
| sense if you're counting page impressions.
| sothatsit wrote:
| This is fairly uncharitable. The goal is not to trick people
| into reading, it is to motivate them as to why they should
| read. It is more about highlighting the most interesting part
| of your article to tell people why they should spend the
| time. You still have to deliver on your promises.
|
| I feel like Gwern's example is quite illustrative of this
| point. Just framing the content differently makes you more
| motivated to jump into it, even if you're reading about the
| same content as before.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I don't know. It's almost universally assumed to be true
| that "making someone want to read on" is inherently good
| but IMO it's not. Why is it good to be "more motivated to
| jump into it"? If a plain description and some context does
| not motivate you, it would be better to spend your time
| elsewhere.
| sothatsit wrote:
| I prefer reading interesting stories to textbooks. It's
| that simple. If all you want to read is textbook entries,
| then you are an outlier.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I now try to follow something like bottom line up front (BLUF)
| when I'm trying to quickly communicate something and respect
| someone's time: the most important, actionable detail first
| with details expanding as you read more.
|
| I first heard that it has a standard in an email from someone
| ex-military; they started the email with "BLUF: blah blah
| blah". Turns out the military had (has?) it as a standard for
| emails. Go figure.
|
| Before then, I remember someone asking Adam Ragusea (Youtube
| cooking channel) why he gives away the point of the video at
| the very beginning. Ragusea explained that he was previously a
| journalism professor, and he refused to bury the lede.
|
| I don't watch cooking content anymore, but I've remained
| impressed that he was able to have a Youtube career while
| avoiding that manipulate-the-audience behavior to drive stats.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| So basically TL;DR :)
| treetalker wrote:
| Zeroth, proofread.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Eh, if your hook is interesting and your writing is generally
| solid, I'm not about to begrudge a few typos
| jfengel wrote:
| True, but any re-reading will let you pick up a lot of the
| typos. If you write it once and ship it unedited, then you
| weren't interested, and the reader likely won't be either.
| Typos clue the reader into that early.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| This article succeeded spectacularly in making me want to know
| all there is to know about medieval Venice, that's for sure.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's really too bad it's not a quote from an actual book.
| treelover wrote:
| "When writing, your first job is this: First, make me care."
|
| It really depends on who the audience is...
| bravura wrote:
| Understanding your audience is your first job as a writer or
| communicator.
|
| Speaking to them and making them care is job two.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Ideally you wouldn't need to make them care. Just give them
| enough information up front for them to determine if they
| care.
| tines wrote:
| I have often thought that all good fiction is mystery. This is
| obviously an overstatement, but I think it's not too far off.
| Humans are mystery solvers. If I don't have a compelling mystery
| to solve--something like the "what's going on beneath the surface
| in this town?" that David Lynch does so well--when I'm reading
| your book or watching your tv show or playing your game, I'm
| usually out unless I have a strong prior interest (which simply
| means that I brought my own mystery).
| Frotag wrote:
| I'm usually the opposite. Mystery feels like the characters,
| the narrator, etc are all being intentionally obscure, for no
| reason other than to pad page count and incite drama.
|
| I prefer stories that are either about evoking feelings
| (adventure, romance, slice of life) or about exploring ideas /
| what-ifs (scifi, fantasy). And ideally stories at the extremes
| of this spectrum. Maybe I've read too many but ones in the
| middle tend to be too cliched to hook me.
| tines wrote:
| It could definitely be my systems-oriented writing. May I ask
| what your profession is? I'm a software engineer.
| Frotag wrote:
| Same, code monkey. But mostly fromt end these days.
| pcrh wrote:
| The hook was great, but article was mediocre. I glazed over at
| the mention of LLMs in the second paragraph, skimming the article
| through to the end didn't improve things.
|
| If your readers now care, don't disappoint them...
| zkmon wrote:
| > When writing, first, make the reader care, one way or another.
| Because if I am not hooked by the first screen, I will probably
| not keep reading--no matter how good the rest of it is!
|
| Keeping the reader glued to the screen is not the primary goal of
| writing. This artificial goal pollutes the connection between
| writer and reader. It makes them buyer and seller and rewards
| sales tactics. You don't write for the reader. You write for
| yourself first. Readers sometimes, just happen to appreciate it
| about as much you do.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| I agree with your first assertion but not so much on the rest.
| There is more than one reason to write and for many it is about
| communication, they have something they want to express and you
| would be wise to consider your reader if that is your goal.
|
| Hooking the reader with the opening page is swinging to the
| other fence of having a terrible opening page that no one will
| get through, generally not good to swing to the fences. I think
| the writer should be honest and upfront with the reader, the
| opening pages should be representative of what is to come, they
| should represent the whole and not just the beginning.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Keeping the reader glued to the screen is not the primary
| goal of writing.
|
| This is common advice in English classes and it predates the
| World Wide Web (and likely the Internet).
|
| Hook them in the first few sentences or lose them.
|
| And yes, of course, it does depend on who the intended audience
| is. You wouldn't do it in The New Yorker.
|
| > You don't write for the reader. You write for yourself first.
| Readers sometimes, just happen to appreciate it about as much
| you do.
|
| Depends very much on the medium. It's definitely not true that
| most professional writing is written for the author's sake. It
| is for an audience. Read books on writing and you'll often find
| the advice to cut out things if they won't interest the reader
| - no matter how valuable it is to you.
|
| I myself struggle with this. Some years ago, I took a trip to
| my childhood home in another country after being separated for
| decades. Almost none of my friends from the time have been
| there in decades either. I made notes during the trip, and when
| I got back I started writing what I saw, and shared it with my
| friends who grew up with me. How various neighborhoods have
| changed. Anecdotes from my childhood tied to those places. And
| a lot more.
|
| I got 30% done, and then decided to hold off sharing till I'd
| written the whole thing. I now have a first draft. It's the
| size of a proper book. It contains a _lot_ of stuff that is of
| value to me, but likely not to most of the (small) audience. I
| know if I share it with them, chances are high no one will read
| it.
|
| On the one hand, the stuff I wrote is highly valuable to me -
| it's become an unintentional memoir. But on the other hand, I
| do want to share quite a bit with my friends, and I know
| they'll value it if they actually read it.
|
| I'll either have to cut a lot out, or write two versions
| (impractical).
|
| The point being that even when you have a very limited
| audience, it is important to care about them and sacrifice your
| needs to an extent.
| zkmon wrote:
| Never cut out stuff that you felt important to include. Just
| forget the reader. The content you write should reflect you,
| not the reader. It's your expression. Don't make it a sales
| pitch, or a reflection of average reader's taste.
|
| I get scared when an author is talking to me, the reader. I
| stop reading when they pretend to be aware of my context.
| Things like "So you are reading this book because you want to
| learn about AI" sounds very cheap.
|
| Also I hate when the actors on TV suddenly start talking to
| the viewer about what they did and why did etc. Disgusting.
|
| Audience want to observe the performers, not converse with
| them. Your best performance comes out when you are not much
| aware of the audience. Like a child playing, ignoring people
| around.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The content you write should reflect you, not the reader.
|
| It's not a binary proposition. One can write for both, as
| long as they're willing to compromise. I'd rather something
| be 80% good and have an audience than 100% good with no
| audience.
|
| Why write if no one will read? I have no idea if even I
| will read it - I already "read" it while writing it. Maybe
| in 20 years I'll revisit? I don't know.
|
| > I get scared when an author is talking to me, the reader.
|
| > Also I hate when the actors on TV suddenly start talking
| to the viewer about what they did and why did etc.
| Disgusting.
|
| That's your quirk. Don't assume others have the same
| preferences as you.
|
| > Things like "So you are reading this book because you
| want to learn about AI" sounds very cheap.
|
| I don't see anyone advocating writing like this.
|
| In general, most writers disagree with you. I take it
| you've not heard of "Kill your darlings"?
| derektank wrote:
| The primary goal of writing is communication. If you are trying
| to convey information, you need someone to actually sit down
| and read it. Most of the time, this isn't a problem, you're
| writing for someone you have a pre-existing relationship with
| and they want to read what you have to say, whether that be a
| friend, a coworker, or your future self.
|
| Problems arise when you move from one:one, to one:many
| communication. If you are trying to pass knowledge on to people
| you have no prior relationship with, you do need to attract
| their attention in a sea of options. If you actually have
| something important to say that other people need to hear, it
| does nobody any good for you to go unnoticed. In those
| circumstances, I don't see anything wrong with taking Gwern's
| advice.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > Keeping the reader glued to the screen is not the primary
| goal of writing [...] You don't write for the reader.
|
| This is contrary to all writing advice I have read, from Robert
| Olen Butler to John Gardner. Sure, the natural geniuses might
| write from themselves or their friends (like Kafka) and because
| they're geniuses the writing is good, but most people aren't
| geniuses, so they need to keep the reader and its needs firmly
| (VERY firmly) in their minds.
|
| Speaking of John Gardner, here is a quote about writing that
| perfectly encapsulates what the job of writer is:
|
| "A true work of fiction does all of the following things, and
| does them elegantly, efficiently: it creates a vivid and
| continuous dream in the reader's mind; it is implicitly
| philosophical; it fulfills or at least deals with all of the
| expectations it sets up; and it strikes us, in the end, not
| simply as a thing done but as a shining performance."
|
| ..."Make me care" is part of the "expectations it sets up".
| "Make me care" begins with the first word of the first chapter,
| continues with the first paragraph and the first page and,
| through the first scene, it eases the reader into the "vivid
| and continuous dream" from which the author should never jolt
| awake the reader.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| aaand, how to apply this technique to a CV?
|
| prepending a one-liner-about-some-feat that _might_ interest that
| particular company, before the usual cv afterthat?
|
| hmm. made me think..
| arjie wrote:
| This insight is what caused the rise of the clickbait headline
| and its predecessors in eras past. You need a hook or there's no
| point reading the tale.
| firefoxd wrote:
| I wrote my story and titled it, "My experience at work with an
| automated HR system". I sent it to a few friends, only a couple
| of them read it.
|
| A week later, I renamed it to "The Machine Fired Me". That seemed
| to capture it better. The goal wasn't to make it click bait, but
| it was to put the spoiler, and punch line right up front. It blew
| up!
|
| I had just read Life of Pi, and one thing I like about that book
| is that you know the punch line before you even pick up a copy. A
| boy is stuck with a bengal tiger in a boat. Now that the punch
| line is out of the way, the story has time to unfold and be
| interesting in its own merit. That's what I was trying to
| recreate with my own story.
| stephenbez wrote:
| "The Machine Fired Me" is one good hook. I found the original
| post and its good: https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-
| fired-me
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's the LinkedIn "broetry" formula.
|
| LI only shows a sentence as a teaser, and good "broets" have
| learned to write a good teaser line.
| nicbou wrote:
| This is such a perfect term for it. Thank you for starting my
| day with a chuckle. I feel validated.
|
| More about this weird phenomenon:
| https://fenwick.media/rewild/magazine/dead-broets-society-
| be...
| NathanaelRea wrote:
| Reminds me of Veritasium's recent videos, really driving that
| initial hook and maintaining the viewer's attention. He had an
| explanation video about it which explained how people who would
| be interested in something like "the Lorenz equation" probably
| don't know what it's called, so it might be more accurate to
| phrase it in terms that someone would search for or initially
| peak their interest.
|
| And I think it fits neatly with making people care first. I
| want to learn more about the machine that fired you, that's
| more the start of a narrative arc. It's almost like I have more
| trust that you will make it interesting, since you put a little
| more work up front.
| chasemp wrote:
| Great example, thanks for sharing.
| zamadatix wrote:
| > The goal wasn't to make it click bait, but it was to put the
| spoiler, and punch line right up front.
|
| For those who are really adverse to that kind of thing and have
| trouble with thinking "but it is is just making it sound like
| clickbait" in the comparison above: You don't have to go as far
| with it either. Just inserting inserting that one detail
| without changing the style or shortening it makes the reader's
| mind go from "maybe some person complaining about automated
| form requirements in benefits sign up or some first week
| onboarding program or something" bore to "fired by an automated
| HR!?" interest.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I have rule on Youtube. If the title of the video is click
| baity then I pick "Don't Recommend Channel", always and
| without exception.
|
| "The Machine Fired Me" would not get me to block the channel
| but I've blocked hundreds of channels.
|
| I also block any channel that appears to be a rando repeating
| the latest hot topic.
| oncallthrow wrote:
| This didn't make me care
| jfengel wrote:
| Agreed, because it's not very actionable advice. At best it
| provides some examples of what not to do.
|
| The example leads to one classic bit of writing advice: tell
| only the very most important things and omit everything else.
| Start the story as late as you can and end it as early as
| possible. This applies to nonfiction just as much as to
| fiction.
| tolerance wrote:
| 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 Ceglowski, 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.
| wetpaws wrote:
| Gwern has hands down one of the worst blogs, readability wise,
| ever created on the internets. His writing style can be hit or
| miss too.
| 1dom wrote:
| 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.
| jefftk wrote:
| 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.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| 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.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| 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
| Jach wrote:
| 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.
| eichin wrote:
| 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 :-)
| tolerance wrote:
| 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.
|
| -- <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42135302>
|
| 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 Ceglowski 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 Ceglowski's
| writing can take a guess at who once called the other a "big
| ole weenis" in an exchange on this very site.
| Jach wrote:
| 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.
| tolerance wrote:
| I appreciate your take on misanthropy. I returned to the
| topic in another comment in a way I think you may find
| apt: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760901>.
|
| 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.
| Jach wrote:
| 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?
| tolerance wrote:
| > 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 rDy llh `nh: "
| _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).
| bee_rider wrote:
| > 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,
|
| https://acoup.blog/2026/01/16/collections-hoplite-wars-
| part-...
|
| 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.
| tolerance wrote:
| 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?
|
| -- <https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-
| decline-and-f...>
|
| I deliberately sought out the introduction of an essay
| that was the beginning of a series instead of one that
| is...Part IV _b_. 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 made 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.
|
| [1] <https://acoup.blog/2019/05/03/blog-overview-a-
| collection-of-...>
|
| [2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46759159>
| davedx wrote:
| Everyone's a critic, hey?
| rrvsh wrote:
| 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!
| ofalkaed wrote:
| >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.
| tolerance wrote:
| 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.
|
| -- <https://gwern.net/about#target-audience>
|
| 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.
|
| [1] <https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html>
|
| [2] <https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html>
|
| [3] <https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813>
| ofalkaed wrote:
| 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.
|
| Edit: Fixed some editing weirdness, I think.
| tolerance wrote:
| 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(tm)' 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.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| 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.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _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?
| mmooss wrote:
| 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.
| tolerance wrote:
| I just finished this response to a sibling comment of yours:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312
|
| 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]
|
| [1] <https://gwern.net/subculture>
|
| [2] <https://gwern.net/embryo-selection>
| mmooss wrote:
| 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.
|
| > I just finished this response to a sibling comment of
| yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760312
|
| I didn't write the parent comment there.
|
| > 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.
| tolerance wrote:
| Oops, uhh. s/sibling comment of/comment
| that's a sibling to
|
| Hope it makes more sense now.
| mmooss wrote:
| Oh I see. Yes, that makes much more sense. :)
| weitendorf wrote:
| 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.
| mmooss wrote:
| 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.
| mvc wrote:
| > 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.
| weitendorf wrote:
| 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.
| mvc wrote:
| 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.
| mcmoor wrote:
| 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.
| flexagoon wrote:
| ACX is honestly an incredible writer. I think it's a very
| high bar to clear.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| 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).
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Yep: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-
| of-the-tal...
|
| Another example of amazing writing (about amazing
| writing)
| trinsic2 wrote:
| 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.
| gizajob wrote:
| 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.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| 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.
| tolerance wrote:
| 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]
|
| [1] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-
| foster-wal...>
|
| [2] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-
| foster-wal...>
|
| [3] <https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/david-
| foster-wal...>
| keiferski wrote:
| 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.
| ashdksnndck wrote:
| 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.
| alexdobrenko wrote:
| > Maciej Ceglowski
|
| Where do you recommend one starts with his writing?
|
| And who else do you love to read?
| underdeserver wrote:
| Probably should be marked (2025).
| zahlman wrote:
| It literally says 2026 in the URL. Perhaps it was written
| before the new year and published now, but that doesn't seem
| particularly relevant to the advice given anyway.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Counterpoint.
|
| People our so tired of sensational intros and baiting questions
| which bury the actual lede up to the point where you discover it
| requires an annual subscription to find out the actual answer,
| that now it's actually counterproductive to start with an
| interesting "question".
|
| It's facts first or gtfo. Prove to me that I'm not going to waste
| my time until you deliver what you promised, by delivering enough
| of that relevant background up front, otherwise I don't have time
| for your shenanigans.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Starting with the point (a.k.a. the inverted pyramid) is
| actually a pretty good way of finding readers that care[1]. I
| fairly often often put the conclusion in the title, and must
| have been on the HN front page over 20 times by now.
|
| This is obviously not the _only_ way to construct an article
| (nor the only one I employ), but it is surprisingly reliable,
| and will attract and retain the readers who are actually
| interested in what you have to say, while letting those that
| aren 't interested find something else.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
| wtetzner wrote:
| > Starting with the point (a.k.a. the inverted pyramid) is
| actually a pretty good way of finding readers that care[1].
|
| I think this is an important distinction. I would argue that
| it's better to make the point clear to find readers that
| care, than to try to make all readers care.
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| Okay, because no one seems to be answering the Venice question:
|
| - They had a strong navy (and shipbuilding capacity), making a
| blockade difficult
|
| - They traded with many nations, so no one group could cut off
| their food supply
|
| - Fish
|
| - They had a near monopoly on the trade of salt and spices, the
| former of which was important to everyone and the latter of which
| was important to aristocrats
|
| (note: I read a few sources but this is not thorough research)
| eulgro wrote:
| Thanks. Ironically, the article started off great with that but
| clearly it wasn't going to answer the question, so I only read
| the first paragraph.
| Animats wrote:
| Venice is the extreme "tail wagging the dog" situation. Venice
| is dinky. It's not much bigger than San Francisco. Yet it was a
| major European power for centuries.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Venice was small by land mass, but controlled the Eastern
| Mediterranean, and therefore the Black Sea endpoint of the
| Silk Road, which was immensely profitable.
|
| Consequently, Vasco da Gama rounding Africa in 1498 doomed
| Venice as a great power.
|
| (All from memory, 100% factuality not guaranteed)
| mdnahas wrote:
| It is a recurring phenomenon. Venice, Netherlands, and today
| Singapore. Small countries without resources and, hence,
| needing trade. They become open trading hubs and grow.
|
| Sadly, countries with a single easy-to-harvest resource ---
| like oil, gold, or gems ---- are more likely to become closed
| dictatorships.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| > Netherlands
|
| Medieval Netherlands had a single easy-to-harvest resource:
| sea fish; a very valuable commodity for protein-starved
| medieval peasantry. They were very lucky to be able pivot
| from that to trade (the pivot required a war between
| merchants and nobles, which the merchants won) before the
| herring and cod started to run out.
| yetihehe wrote:
| And thus "question-bait" was born.
| blauditore wrote:
| I disagree with the stated examples and literally quit reading
| there.
| seydor wrote:
| 10 reasons why clickbait is good for you:
|
| 1)
| fukukitaru wrote:
| Chuunibyou-tier slop.
| mvkel wrote:
| This seems like a cheap trick to hook someone into a blog post
| (ironically, Gwern seems to disregard this almost universally).
|
| If I were reading a book and each chapter started with such a
| "hook," it'd start to feel like a LinkedIn post.
|
| Chapter 1: I didn't know what it felt like to be alive until I
| was dead...
|
| Chapter 2: Death was nothing compared to what came next:
| judgment.
|
| Chapter 3: I thought I knew what judgment was until...
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Chapter I: IN WHICH PHILEAS FOGG AND PASSEPARTOUT ACCEPT EACH
| OTHER, THE ONE AS MASTER, THE OTHER AS MAN
|
| Chapter II: IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT IS CONVINCED THAT HE HAS AT
| LAST FOUND HIS IDEAL
|
| Chapter III: IN WHICH A CONVERSATION TAKES PLACE WHICH SEEMS
| LIKELY TO COST PHILEAS FOGG DEAR
|
| - https://www.online-literature.com/verne/aroundtheworld/
| otikik wrote:
| Careful with this advice. If you max it out you end up with
|
| "You won't believe the weird trick that the city of Venice did to
| feed itself"
| julianeon wrote:
| This article is just a slightly upscale version of the million
| "YouTube hooks" videos you can find on, well, you know. Down to
| the "create a gap" advice.
|
| Once upon a time "one weird trick" was good advice too, before
| it got ran into the ground.
| firasd wrote:
| I'm beginning to think that origin stories are an underrated way
| to find these angles. Like why exactly did you start thinking
| about this topic. I guess the recipe bloggers were on to this
| with their long rambles about where they first tried this dish
| (albeit it may have been for SEO too...)
| danderedandolo wrote:
| Know your audience is right, and Gwern misses the most
| interesting thing about Venice- that it was a merchantile
| Republic with reasonable independance from the Catholic Church.
| Lots of the political ideas which influenced British and American
| democracy came from the Italian city states. Ruskin's Stones of
| Venice and Bowsma's "Venice and the defense of republican
| liberty" capture this well, as do parts of Quentin Skinner's "The
| Foundations of Modern Political Thought."
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| Perhaps I am too much of a curmudgeon, but the example first
| sentence made me not care at all - not about Venice, but about
| the writer's approach, which seems to want to conjure breathless
| mystery about something I could easily look up on Wikipedia (or
| read in tl;dr comments in this thread).
|
| It ISN'T Venice you need to make me care about, it's YOU! Why
| should I spend any of my time on you?
|
| A good first sentence should make me care about your perspective,
| at least for non-fiction about subjects well-studied.
|
| Fiction, obvs, differs. Scalzi's Old Man's War had such a great
| first sentence I devoured the series.
| dvrp wrote:
| Care is the most important trait of people who make great things;
| it's not money or time. Is not even skill.
|
| I was interviewing a candidate yesterday and I noticed that a
| project inside their personal website was not working. I told him
| my opinion on care and he said that he hasn't had the time to
| deploy it, since he's been working on it for 2 weeks already and
| it was working on his local machine.
|
| A few hours after the interview, the project was online.
|
| The bitter pill of realizing the importance of care is that this
| applies not just to literary works, like Gwern's case, but it
| also applies to any creative endeavor: writing, music, drawing,
| and yes, software engineering.
|
| That CLI tool without a tutorial. That product with a confusing
| sign-up flow. The purchase without a confirmation dialog such
| that I don't feel I was just scammed.
|
| It's all the same. Lack of care.
|
| I've also noticed that when caring is there, skills follow.
| atmosx wrote:
| Adrian Wooldridge (the Economist) in "Aristocracy of Talent: How
| Meritocracy Made the Modern World" argues, rather successfully
| IMO, that what made Venice the maritime super-power was
| meritocracy. Indeed, he argues, that the fall of the Venitian
| empire came swiftly when the Doge was forced to place only
| Venitians (birthright) to top positions, instead of the most
| "capable". Hence the available talent pool shrunk.
|
| The book makes for a fine read IMO:
| https://www.amazon.com/Aristocracy-Talent-Meritocracy-Modern...
|
| ps. this book came out as a response to Michael Sandell's "The
| Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?" which was a
| best seller at the time.
| oytis wrote:
| So how did Venice maintain its dominance?
| imoreno wrote:
| There's a spectrum of writing, corresponding to supply/demand or
| push/pull. The article is giving advice for oversupplied writing,
| where the audience doesn't really want to hear you, and you're
| trying to badger it into reading it anyway - typically, for some
| sort of personal gain (getting an interview, making a sale,
| promoting a political cause). Yes, attention hacking is important
| in this case.
|
| There is also a writing where people are looking for the
| information, and they are showing up at your door because they
| already care. Presumably you wrote, because you saw the open
| question, and want to try answering it. History books,
| encyclopedias, classic literature by dead people, falls under
| this. Ironically, so does the example of Venice - you would read
| about Venice if you were already curious; there is little profit
| in "making someone care" about Venice otherwise. An attention
| grabby style would be forced and counterproductive in this.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I hate this. Basically it's saying use constant clickbait to keep
| your reader reading.
|
| Increasingly, readers don't have time for this shit. Be direct,
| and if the reader doesn't care, they were never meant to be your
| reader anyway. Someone _will_ care, write for them.
| davidw wrote:
| The actual story of how cod from Norway came to be a thing in the
| Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia is pretty interesting:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini
| kazinator wrote:
| Video edition:
|
| 1. First, make me care.
|
| 2. Then provide an indication (e.g. in the video description)
| giving the time in the video where the question starts to be
| answered.
|
| If you make me somewhat care, but I have to binary search through
| your video to skip the rambling, I'm likely to back button out.
| NegativeK wrote:
| First, make me care and tell me the answer. In 30 seconds.
|
| Then expand on it in increasingly advanced levels of detail.
|
| If your knowledge is high, I won't care about the video
| production. If you're not getting to the point quickly, you're
| manipulating the audience into getting views; education and
| sharing knowledge isn't the main driver of your video.
|
| But what I want is idealistic.
| mmooss wrote:
| Expanding Gwern's well made point, just a little, is that writing
| of any length needs a thesis statement in the first paragraph or
| so.
|
| Thesis statements are not a new techniques, and these days they
| are needed much more because there is so much to read. Many
| articles don't state their thesis at all or not for a long time.
|
| I don't have time to read that far to find out if it's worthwhile
| to me. Unless you are Satoshi Nakamoto, I'm not going to read far
| to find out.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| A good writer should be able to write a catchy hook.
|
| A wise person should be able to read text that is flavored like
| cardboard. In general, one thing I dislike about this moment, is
| the incredible emphasis we place on the first five seconds of
| everything because everyone is thinking about all the other
| things we could be doing.
|
| But many things are great because of how they feel 20 years
| later. The first five seconds of playing a musical instrument is
| horrible, but 20 years later and it is sublime. Emacs, Vim, are
| both notoriously forbidding, and yet, they are wonderful tools.
| Some things can be massaged to meet both criteria (I can imagine
| some emacs configuration that made it less painful and surfaced
| its true power in the first five seconds _maybe_ ), but other
| things are hard by _nature_ and derive their value from how we
| have to adapt to them instead of how well they are adapted to us.
| I feel like the AI era is going to just accelerate this trend
| where everything we interact with is a slick surface and many
| people will never experience depth.
|
| Read boring shit.
| gizajob wrote:
| I felt like the movie Marty Supreme completely failed to make me
| care about the main character until the final act where the
| filmmakers had to pull out all the big easy stops to force me to
| care about him. A third of the way in to the movie I was
| wondering if it was going to be explained at any point why I
| should be interested in this guy or care about his difficult and
| fairly unremarkable personality. A lot of the time it seems as if
| creatives assume that if you're watching/reading/engaging with
| their movie/book/artwork then you already care enough to care.
| ziofill wrote:
| This reminds me of what my PhD supervisor told me as he was
| trashing my first draft of my first paper: "up until this point
| in your life you've been trained to convince someone who knows
| more than you that you know something by writing impressive
| equations and complex concepts. Now _you_ are the expert and if
| you do that nobody will read your papers. And if someone stops
| after a few sentences you'll lose citations too."
| bawis wrote:
| What was your PhD thesis about ?
| ziofill wrote:
| I studied the entanglement formed during a quantum nonlinear
| process
| muzani wrote:
| Similar experience with my bachelor's thesis after I presented
| it.
|
| Supervisor: "Great job with this."
|
| Me: "The assessor didn't seem too impressed."
|
| Supervisor: "You should have sold it better."
|
| That was the point where I realized that all the technical
| stuff doesn't really matter if nobody realizes how hard it was
| or why they should care.
| shalmanese wrote:
| There is content you write for acquisition and content you write
| for retention and my #1 tip for writers who want to engineer
| growing an audience is be clear before you sit down to write a
| piece which it's going to be.
|
| Content for acquisition, the reader's relationship is to the
| topic, they have to be convinced the topic is relevant to their
| life goals but it's valuable despite who the topic.
|
| Content for retention, the readers relationship is to you as the
| writer and the topic is merely there as a MacGuffin to help
| illuminate some aspect of you that is unique.
|
| Business Insider had this down to a science over a decade ago.
| They started a series called "So Expensive", detailing why
| various things were expensive, the first 4 videos in the series
| were: Caviar, Saffron, Rolexes and Horseshoe Crab Blood.
| Statistically, some tens of millions of people have organically
| had the thought of why the first 3 were expensive but zero people
| have even wondered why horseshoe crab blood was expensive. The
| 4th video was a way to test, of all the people who were willing
| to click on the first three, how many were willing to follow
| along to the 4th because of a trust in BI? The next 4 in the
| series was Vanilla, Silk, Louboutins & Scorpion Venom.
|
| Creating all content for acquisition is both too exhausting and
| also sub optimal for the reader because they want deeper stuff to
| follow as well. I suggest up to 1 in 3 acquisition articles if
| you can manage when starting out but then ramping down to no more
| than 1 in 10 fairly quickly or you burn out.
| kqr wrote:
| This mirrors reflections I've had recently as well. I have
| been, for the most part, focusing on what you would call
| "content for acquisition", i.e. easily relatable, somewhat
| shallow, extensively researched articles that show off what I
| can write at my best.
|
| But in trying to aim for a regular cadence in the past year,
| I've realised I cannot maintain that level across the board. So
| I've started to write things that aren't as "good", in my
| flawed subjective judgment. Yet surprisingly often those are
| the things I get positive emails about, from readers who are
| glad I took the time to put things into words.
|
| I am trying to come to terms with the idea that some of my more
| enthusiastic readers might really be happy to read even things
| that aren't up to what I consider to be my standards. But it's
| _deeply_ uncomfortable. Triggers my impostor syndrome like
| little else.
| shalmanese wrote:
| Another common mistake I see "thoughtfluencer" bloggers make
| is they think they need a brand new idea per post. This not
| only isn't sustainable, it's bad for the audience.
|
| Instead, I think a successful blog is really about finding
| your, at most, 3 - 5 big ideas and instead showing the
| audience how they apply in many different context. For
| example, Matt Levine returns to a few commmon catchphrases
| across years of his writing: "People are worried about bond
| market liquidity", "Everything Is Securities Fraud" etc. that
| crop up in odd and wonderful ways in totally new contexts
| across years of writing. Forming a relationship with his
| writing is deepening your appreciation of these concepts.
| njarboe wrote:
| "Venice built a maritime empire from a city that couldn't feed
| itself; so who fed it--and why didn't its enemies simply starve
| it out?"
|
| I love ancient history and would read a good book about the
| Venetian empire, but the sentence answers the final question.
| Venice was a maritime empire (it's capital on an island), that's
| why its enemies could not starve it out. All in on finding out
| who fed it.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| What are those sun symbols after paragraph ends.
|
| Always found them interesting.
| clort wrote:
| Well they are sun symbols. I guess if you are asking how are
| they produced, they are embedded SVG in the CSS at
| https://gwern.net/static/css/style.css
|
| see for instance --GW-image-sun-verginasun-black-svg
| DeathArrow wrote:
| This is even more true for public speaking. Try to hook people
| from the start.
| teiferer wrote:
| > We could easily have a 2026 LLM deliver high-quality editing
| advice to fix this up extensively, but it would still be
| mediocre.
|
| This seems to suggest that a human needs to be in the creative
| loop, but that could be short sighted. LLM training has humans in
| the loop which optimize for not being bored. That's a reason for
| LLM texts typically being recognizeable because at the current
| stage they are a little too simplistically flashy. But give it a
| few iterations and the machine will excel humans at catching
| their attention, i.e., making them care.
|
| As others wrote: Tiktok is already excellent at that. While the
| content in there still has humans in the loop, the choice what to
| show to whom and when is already entirely mechanical.
| miki123211 wrote:
| What I find extremely off-putting and overused is the pattern of
| making you care about an article by saying something about the
| person being interviewed, usually related to the interview
| itself. Think "he was a balding man[...] drinking his matcha
| latte[...]" It's always something which has zero bearing on the
| situation in question.
|
| Whenever I see this, I immediately turn to cmd-a + cmd-c +
| `pbpaste | llm 'summarize this'`
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| That's basically what tv shows do every time. The pilot is
| great/awesome then the 10 episodes are boring and the very last
| one get exciting enough for you to wait the second season.
|
| Best example: the walking dead season tv shows.
| orleyhuxwell wrote:
| For the last 30 years I've decided that the best stuff (most
| engaging books, stories, experiences in life) require investment.
| It gets worse (you go through some pain while exercising) before
| it gets better. That's essentially a definition of a good life to
| me - finding the things worth sacrificing resources and getting
| the payoff.
|
| So 'first make me care' to me is a manifest of Gen Z - tiktok -
| brainrot approach. From my perspective you miss most of the
| really good stuff by cultivating this approach. I.e. my favorite
| books - Tai Pan, Noble House; tv series - Better Call Saul! -
| require you to go through so much of initial boredom. It's also
| the same discussion as 'learn to code vs only do AI Slop' or
| 'learn math and algos vs only import functions from libs and
| never check what's inside'.
|
| *Exceptions apply, ofc. There are things that hook you and
| progressively ad depth, but it's really rare. I.e. Arcane tv show
| is both easy to access and quite deep.
|
| Edit: ...so I can imagine math teacher that first tell you what
| are some amazing uses of derivatives and integrals - PIDs, SGD,
| better estimation, wave functions, generalized description of
| problems, accessing interesting physics etc. And after that they
| make you grind. I think it would be quite great. But it is so
| rare, that you have to make a leap of faith and assume most of
| the good stuff is boring initially.
| d--b wrote:
| The author is right, I care a lot more about the Venice thing
| than reading the rest of the article.
| raincole wrote:
| Is this a good advice? Yes.
|
| And what would happen if everyone followed it? Clickbait titles
| like "the third one will surprise you" and TikTok.
| wosined wrote:
| Sorry, but I have to disagree. I don't like books that read like
| adverts.
| smeej wrote:
| I found it really ironic that the author started with something
| attention-grabbing about a topic completely unrelated to his
| point, but then made a series of such mundane statements to begin
| his own writing that _I_ didn 't care enough to go past _his_
| first screen. He didn 't make me care about why I should make
| people care.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| So LLMs can't do that? Every LLM-written historical or pseoudo-
| historical (i.e. made up) thing that comes up in my Facebook feed
| does start with a "hook" like that. Doesn't make them great
| articles but obviously you can prompt them to do it.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Part of the hook is asking a question. It immediately gets people
| investing in thinking of an answer
| greenie_beans wrote:
| read about what gordon lish has to say about opening a story:
| https://www.tetmancallis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-...
| ziofill wrote:
| I'm from Venice and it's heartwarming to see someone from a
| different country/culture so into the history of Venice <3
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