White was certainly a genius, but Strunk was a pinheaded frosh-hazing goon, and he wrote the book. Strunk and White is terrible. There really is more to writing than knowing where to put the apostrophe in a plural possessive, and if there weren’t you wouldn’t have spent so much of your life doing it.
If writing is that important to you, you should read Thomas and Turner’s Clear and Simple as the Truth. They answer all the higher questions of style that Strunk and White, and Orwell and Ogilvy and all the rest are weak or silent on.
It turns out that there’s a lot of cognitive science in writing. Once you develop an awareness of that, you can use it to impart tones to your writing to make it distinguished or whimsical or anything in between. It’s useful even for blogging and it’s deeply satisfying when you pull it off. It makes you feel heard.
"Sometimes people start out poor, and end up rich. Sometimes this is because they create real net value for the world, and sometimes this is because they gambled, where their wins came from others’ losses. But to the people involved, this difference may not be noticeable. What they see is how they started poor, then initiated many particular risky and effortful activities, had ups and downs which tempted them to quit, but had attitudes that made them persist, and then they finally succeeded.
Such newly rich folks are quite often sensitive to criticism about their wins."
This is my brain:
At this point I still have no idea what the plot of this piece is. Poverty bad? Inequality bad? Luck bad? Gambling bad? "To the people involved" - okay so there's a shadow council? They don't notice the difference, okay what difference, have to come back to that later. They had persistent attitudes -- good people? Succeeded -- good people. Started poor -- virtuous. Particularly risky -- bad. Effortful -- good.
Newly rich folks -- okay it's about newly rich folks. Are sensitive to criticism -- okay so they're... dumb? Arrogant? Naive?
My brain continues:
Okay, well what are the facts of this piece. Some people start out poor and end up rich. True enough. A bit of a myth though, I mean don't billionaires start out millionaires. So maybe Hanson is about to fall for a bunch of Silicon Valley lore. How can they gamble if they started out poor? Don't you need money to gamble? Okay metaphor failing here.
But maybe he's critical of those people? Is this a self-critical piece?
Ok it's crypto good because while people who get rich think they got rich for the wrong reasons, they're young and use the money for socially good things I guess, and that makes crypto good even though there's assholes in it.
Fine accounting of a brain finding itself in an almost lifelong habit, induced by family etc, of producing text more so than speech. A praise of habit so to speak. Finesse observations of what works for reaching lay persons.
> can I collate all the case studies of striking personality changes that occurred as side effects of deep brain stimulation?
This is a tangent off a tangent, so feel free to delete this comment… but I found the book "Switched On" to be fascinating—it's a guy with autism recounting how his personality changed after TMS.
White was certainly a genius, but Strunk was a pinheaded frosh-hazing goon, and he wrote the book. Strunk and White is terrible. There really is more to writing than knowing where to put the apostrophe in a plural possessive, and if there weren’t you wouldn’t have spent so much of your life doing it.
If writing is that important to you, you should read Thomas and Turner’s Clear and Simple as the Truth. They answer all the higher questions of style that Strunk and White, and Orwell and Ogilvy and all the rest are weak or silent on.
It turns out that there’s a lot of cognitive science in writing. Once you develop an awareness of that, you can use it to impart tones to your writing to make it distinguished or whimsical or anything in between. It’s useful even for blogging and it’s deeply satisfying when you pull it off. It makes you feel heard.
Why would someone use "Luciferean" when "Promethean" is right there?
Yep. Weird choice.
OH WOW I read the Hanson and you're right.
"Sometimes people start out poor, and end up rich. Sometimes this is because they create real net value for the world, and sometimes this is because they gambled, where their wins came from others’ losses. But to the people involved, this difference may not be noticeable. What they see is how they started poor, then initiated many particular risky and effortful activities, had ups and downs which tempted them to quit, but had attitudes that made them persist, and then they finally succeeded.
Such newly rich folks are quite often sensitive to criticism about their wins."
This is my brain:
At this point I still have no idea what the plot of this piece is. Poverty bad? Inequality bad? Luck bad? Gambling bad? "To the people involved" - okay so there's a shadow council? They don't notice the difference, okay what difference, have to come back to that later. They had persistent attitudes -- good people? Succeeded -- good people. Started poor -- virtuous. Particularly risky -- bad. Effortful -- good.
Newly rich folks -- okay it's about newly rich folks. Are sensitive to criticism -- okay so they're... dumb? Arrogant? Naive?
My brain continues:
Okay, well what are the facts of this piece. Some people start out poor and end up rich. True enough. A bit of a myth though, I mean don't billionaires start out millionaires. So maybe Hanson is about to fall for a bunch of Silicon Valley lore. How can they gamble if they started out poor? Don't you need money to gamble? Okay metaphor failing here.
But maybe he's critical of those people? Is this a self-critical piece?
ctrl+A, C
claude.ai
ctrl+V
"summarize this piece"
Ok it's crypto good because while people who get rich think they got rich for the wrong reasons, they're young and use the money for socially good things I guess, and that makes crypto good even though there's assholes in it.
K whatever
Fine accounting of a brain finding itself in an almost lifelong habit, induced by family etc, of producing text more so than speech. A praise of habit so to speak. Finesse observations of what works for reaching lay persons.
> can I collate all the case studies of striking personality changes that occurred as side effects of deep brain stimulation?
This is a tangent off a tangent, so feel free to delete this comment… but I found the book "Switched On" to be fascinating—it's a guy with autism recounting how his personality changed after TMS.