Persuade xor Discover

by fallentimes • 17 years ago

148 106 17 years ago

shimon• 17 years ago

An exercise from the essay:

...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2]

Footnote:

[2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend.

Please submit your solutions below.

sachinag2• 17 years ago

I'm skeptical that some groups of people are inherently braver, smarter, or harder working than others.

ewjordan• 17 years ago

Too imprecise. The claim was that a segmentation by birth year would not be expected to correlate with bravery, smarts, or hard work, not that there's no segmentation that correlates with any of those qualities.

Your proposed version is quite PC, to be sure, and I'm sure most humanities majors would defend it tooth and nail (cheap dig, I know :) ), but that in itself suggests to me that it's not what pg had in mind...

For one, I'd expect a lot of people here, including pg, to believe that startup founders excel in all of those categories, even if it's simply selection bias that causes it.

rms4• 17 years ago

And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; all generations have the potential to be as great as the (Greatest Generation, GI Generation) when faced with sufficient external challenges.

cperciva• 17 years ago

'... I'm skeptical about the idea that the current generation is in any way inferior to past generations.'

rms4• 17 years ago

A first step to this exercise is the expand the statement to make sure that your rephrasing is expressing all the original ideas.

Idea #1: skepticism about the idea that one generation is inherently better or worse than another generation, specifically with regards to the WW2 generation

Idea #2: People have a tendency to rise to meet external challenges as it becomes necessary. So if Generation Y had a challenge as great as WW2, we would rise to meet it, and if the present day union leaders had a challenge as great as the historical labor movement, they would rise to meet it.

What else?

tsally4• 17 years ago

I've never met Arrington, so whether he's nice or not doesn't really apply to me. I also don't own a startup, so there's no conflict there. My personal beef is that TechCrunch is a 'serious journalistic entity' when they get documents leaked to them, but the second people start trying to hold them to the standard of real journalism suddenly it a blog. It's difficult to pinpoint, but there's something two-faced about TechCrunch that I don't like. It's some combination of the sensationalism, exaggeration, and in some cases outright fabrication that really get to me. Since Arrington is the founder and figurehead of TechCrunch, my feelings about the blog naturally extend to him.

The fact that page views and advertising revenue are the ultimate goals is fine. I applaud TechCrunch and Arrington for being successful. That doesn't mean I have to like their methods. Google was successful through technical merit. They never did anything flashy and eventually won because they were better. I'd like to see a startup blog succeed because of journalistic merit, instead of link-bait headlines and baseless speculation. TechCrunch has its gems to be sure, but there's too much garbage there for me.

An example for your consideration:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-b...

For those too lazy to read, it's an article about making viral videos. Some choice advice: "Content is NOT King, Make it short, Make it shocking, Use fake headlines, Appeal to sex". It also goes on to tell you how to spam yourself to the Most Viewed page on Youtube. Arrington is the founder and an editor, so either himself or someone he appointed approved this article for publication. That's why I don't like Arrington.

Perhaps the reason why people don't hate Paul like they hate Arrington is because Paul has produced things of value? Hell, having the PDF of On Lisp online available for free is more valuable than the aggregate of TechCrunch's entire publication history.

EDIT: Hate is a strong word. If you hate anyone over the internet for any reason, that's pretty stupid. Dislike is what I was getting at.

buugs• 17 years ago

I get a very similar feeling with techcrunch, it is as if techcrunch is the tabloid of the upcoming web culture. Rather than real journalism it is often lacking in value but techcrunch thinks it can make up for that by being first without verifying sources or even thinking about the content they are producing.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

without verifying sources or even thinking about the content they are producing.

That's why I dislike Arrington. Because he heads a culture where cramming the news out the door is more important than taking reasonable steps [1] to ensure it is accurate.

There is a reason print media doesn't do that much any more! Because eventually you print a lie that does someone (or a company) serious untold damage.

In my mind the Last.fm debacle was a prime example of TC coming very close to crossing that line.

[1] that's important, no one would ever get a scoop if we needed verification signed in triplicate and investigated by a neutral third party :D

modeless• 17 years ago

The thing that bothers me about TechCrunch is that the comment section is a cesspool. Every time I scroll down there I regret it immediately.

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

You know what Doctor Vinnie Boombatz would say about that one right?

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

I agree with you on the general principle about TechCrunch having far too low standards, but that article you linked was incredibly useful. It gave significant insight on how to game a system that can be very lucrative, from someone who has done it. It highlights the flaws in YouTubes counts and display methods that can be taken advantage of.

That's actually the sort of thing I want to see on a blog or in a tech-focused newspaper. I could totally see that being a Wired Article (though copy-edited to be less like a how-to and more like a story).

pg11• 17 years ago

"I've never met Arrington, so whether he's nice or not doesn't really apply to me."

Sure it does, if you've read his articles. Obviously most of the people who complain about him in comment threads have not met him in person. The reason they dislike him is that he uses the same un-ingratiating style in his articles.

When he reports something he's heard, he just reports it, without the usual boilerplate disclaimers that it's just a rumor, or pro forma protestations about how he hopes it's not true, or most dishonest of all, waiting for someone else to cover it, and then covering that coverage. This sort of sanctimoniousness is so universal in established media that it seems shocking when someone just skips it.

Speaking of intellectual honesty, it seems hypocritical to me that you're willing to accuse TechCrunch of "outright fabrication" and "baseless speculation" and the best evidence you can produce is a 2 year old guest post by a Stanford student.

If you have any examples of "outright fabrication," let's see them.

tsally4• 17 years ago

I don't care if he appears to be a nice or a mean guy. I don't judge people by that criteria. My experience working in the academic research community has taught me that intelligent and busy people sometimes come across as mean, but it's nothing personal. I'm totally used to un-ingratiating people and I work with them every day; it doesn't affect me at all.

I'm going to call bullshit on this one. How about you being reprimanded for asking "mean" questions at TechCrunch 50? Apparently Arrington wanted the boilerplate. I suppose it probably has something to do with the fact that it was TechCrunch's reputation on the line, not a company he was writing about.

That's a fair point, but I don't really feel like wasting an hour of my evening digging through TechCrunch archives. I'll pull a TechCrunch and say that an anonymous source close to the TechCrunch editorial board told me. My original comment is about as well sourced as their average article. ;) Also, it's not hypocritical since I'm not earning advertising dollars from my words. I don't claim that journalism is my profession. If I was making money off of the words I posted to HN, I would keep track of my sources. As it stands right now, I'm simply offering an opinion.

EDIT: dfranke has some examples though: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838197

EDIT2:

If you have any examples of "outright fabrication," let's see them.

Those words were chosen in haste and I wont defend them. You're right to call me out on them. I don't actually believe that TechCrunch is in the business of outright fabrication. If I wrote a popular and influential tech blog I would have deleted those words during the editing phase. :)

maryrosecook• 17 years ago

"This is just a rumour" is not boilerplate if it's the only reference to the source of the information. Also, "sources" is highly ambiguous: who do you mean? the guys at the bus stop or the company board members?

ntoshev• 17 years ago

I bet there are a lot of people here who like your writing and dislike TechCrunch (I am one). This can't be true if people dislike you both for the same reason.

It is clear from your writing that you are after the truth, and it is clear from TechCrunch articles they are after the pageviews only. This is okay if they provided quality product, instead they provide the latest rumors with little technical understanding behind linkbait uninformative titles.

Alex3917• 17 years ago

"Google was successful through technical merit."

According to PEW Research, 5/6 search users can't tell the difference between the search results and the sponsored links, so the idea that Google won based on "technical merit" is pretty much wrong. To 95% of people Google was just another search engine but with better marketing.

stanleydrew• 17 years ago

This is silly. If your sponsored links and search results are indistinguishable but extremely relevant you still have the best search engine. And then there's the speed factor, which you've completely ignored. And better marketing? You can't be serious.

dfranke2• 17 years ago

I'm fairly sure it's the comment thread that I started (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831461) which set off this essay, so I guess I'm the archetype of "ordinarily calm people who go berserk when [Arrington's] name comes up in comment threads". But if your explanation of my psychology is correct, then why don't I go berserk at you as well? I've disagreed with a few of your essays, and by and large pointed out those disagreements in these comment threads, but I've never disagreed violently with any of them. My beef with Arrington is that he writes a gossip tabloid. Nothing more, nothing less.

iamwil• 17 years ago

The essay is less about arrington berserkers than it is about why pg writes the way he does, even though the discovery started off as a question about arrington berserkers.

babyshake• 17 years ago

I agree. One of the common traits of a 'discovery' essay is you don't end up answering the question you asked.

And I should mention that the reason I don't like Mike involves a very poor way he treated someone I know.

mrshoe2• 17 years ago

I think a lot of hackers, myself included, have a hard time with persuasion. I've found that my first instinct is often to respond to a coworker's proposal with something like, "Here are 10 reasons why that's a horrible idea." That ends up being counter-productive, so I'm trying to learn how to suppress that instinct.

Unfortunately, people's egos get hurt easily. You can't tell them what you think. You can't disagree with them blatantly. You have to slowly and carefully guide them from a place where they're 100% correct to a new place where they're still 100% correct even though they now think completely differently about the problem. It's not easy, and the hacker in me always considers it a huge waste of time and effort. Why can't people just accept that their first idea was wrong and move on?

One method I've found effective is to just link to a few articles on the subject. The hope is that 1) the author of the articles is better at persuasion than I am, and 2) my peer's ego is more open to taking advice from an expert than from me.

If you're Steve Jobs (or Mike Arrington or pg), then you are fortunate enough to have little need for this persuasive cruft in your life. If the rest of us want any chance of influencing people higher in the pecking order, however, we need to cradle their fragile egos.

vinutheraj• 17 years ago

"Learn how to tell them to go to hell in such a way they'll want to go." - heard in the 61st Emmy Awards, forgot who said it though !

thaumaturgy4• 17 years ago

I've done this, and it's fun. It was also a bit of business judo -- I recommended an exceptionally difficult client to one of my competitors. Gave 'em the phone number and everything.

alex_c• 17 years ago

I could write that way if I had to [...] It makes the same point [...] But written this way it seems like a defense of present-day union organizers rather than an attack on early ones. [...] If I believe everything I said in the second version, why didn't I write it that way? Why offend people needlessly?

I disagree that it makes the same point. I'm sure it's intended to make the same point, but it doesn't - "written this way it seems like" == "it makes a different point", as far as I'm concerned.

The code example isn't a perfect parallel: you can cut down code but still have it perform the exact same functionality - it either follows a certain execution path or it doesn't. That's not so easy to do with writing, since there is no "hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader".

I don't think it's about offending people or not, it's about whether or not the reader walks away with the point you're actually trying to make. It should usually be possible to avoid both "offensive" and "fawning", and settle on "neutral".

Of course, the problem is that "neutral" is often the most boring to read.

heuristix2• 17 years ago

This is a strawman defence. PG is defending Arrington's curtness when you meet him in person and accepting the facts as presented (since I have no personal knowledge), the defense sounds reasonable.

However, as many others mention below, most people dislike Arrington because Techcrunch has no journalistic scruples. The way they attacked Last.fm without even bothering to properly check into facts was yet another example of this.

mrshoe2• 17 years ago

That's probably why the title of the essay is "Persuade xor Discover". pg started out thinking about Arrington, but, since he was writing to discover, he explored other ideas. Those ideas became the main point of the essay.

heuristix2• 17 years ago

The fact that the essay is mostly about the other ideas and titled as such does not discount the fact that the argument therein that most people dislike Arrington simply because he is curt is flawed.

pg cites his own curt/succint approach to writing as a reason people dislike him and speculates that people dislike Arrington for the same reason, thus using Arrington as an example for part of his argument. While pg's central thesis in the essay stands, the Arrington example does not.

pg11• 17 years ago

When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves. Try this thought experiment: if Arrington seemed like the nicest, most self-deprecating guy in the world-- like Father Mulcahy, for anyone who remembers MASH-- would people be so angry about his supposed lack of journalistic scruples?

dfranke2• 17 years ago

I'd still object to his publishing of the stolen Twitter memos under the pretense, contradicted by Ev, that he had permission, no matter how ingratiating he were about it. Other conduct, such as his baseless attack on Last.FM and his recent T-shirt gaffe, simply could not be formulated or carried out by the personality that you describe.

philwelch• 17 years ago

I suspect many people would still have no idea what Arrington's personality is in person, and thus continue to judge him entirely based upon the behavior of TechCrunch. How he greets people in person probably has no real impact.

This can extend even further--from everything I've gathered, George W. Bush is a very easy person to like once you know him in person. Yet he was very recently one of the most widely despised people in the world. Your actual personality doesn't seem to matter once you start doing things people don't like, or otherwise become famous outside people who know you in person.

rw• 17 years ago

Maybe you are actually arrogant? How could you tell that you aren't just using your concise writing style as an excuse to offend people?

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves.

That's a bit of an logic leap though. Common sense suggests that if someone is disliked by a person, the reason is most likely evident and known. Most don't dislike as a default response.

Assertions not following Occam's Razor need citation.

tsally4• 17 years ago

Well, if you're going to be a badass journalist, you have to do it all the time. Arrigton just does it when it serves his purpose and that's why he lacks journalistic integrity. Case in point: you were told you were being mean because your insightful questions made some startups look bad at TechCrunch50.

thaumaturgy4• 17 years ago

Angry? No, because anger isn't the appropriate emotional response to such a person.

But that doesn't mean that people would react positively, either. The response would simply be altered: people would likely try to work with him, try to correct his behavior as they saw fit, or dismiss him altogether.

> When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves.

This is stunningly arrogant, and I'm speaking as someone that's constantly accused of arrogance. If you're going to tell people that you understand their motivations or behaviors better than they do, you should trot out some better evidence than mere conjecture.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

I think anger is unfair; I font like him much, I don't hold a lot of respect for him as an individual (though I respect his achievements) and I do think that recently he has started to get worse.

But Im not going to sit and rant angrily at him. Commentors on TechCrunch do plenty of that - but y'know every blog has that. TCC just reacts badly to it sometimes :)

Yes there are angry people - your right. Some probably dont like his abrasiveness (It's never worried me; my family are like that so Im used to it), some probably dont like his ethics and get cross (again, never understood that one). Sadly none of this is will change their minds :)

(Just look at Graywolf angrily hounding Matt Cutts day and night over any conspiracy he can formulate in Google blog posts / press release etc. he wont stop no matter how patient Cutts is with him)

paul• 17 years ago

This is a very interesting observation. It might be amusing if PG rewrote some of his more controversial essays in the second style, then made both versions available. Think of it as "skinning". Since the discovery version was written before the persuasive version, the persuasion needn't interfere with the discovery.

pg11• 17 years ago

Intriguing idea, at least as a sort of practical joke. The problem is, it would change the ideas. For example, when I rewrote the paragraph about labor unions, I had to ditch the point about fallen civilizations overrating past eras; though I didn't make the link explicitly, the comparison to medieval history would be obvious to anyone who'd studied much of it. (People in medieval Europe felt inferior to the ancients long after it ceased to be true.) I didn't like tossing this point, but there was no convenient way to get it into the new version.

gregwebs• 17 years ago

How about a program to re-write for persuasion once you have written for discovery. I bet it wouldn't be to hard to program one that could make an essay sound more timid and nice. That is a fairly simple process that I usually go through before communicating electronically. However, as you stated you would still have to add the extra content.

auston• 17 years ago

I've met Michael Arrington once & talked to him on several occasions. He was never short or rude, only seemingly, endlessly occupied.

In fact, all of the staff @ TechCrunch seem to be nice, people of the few I've met.

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

Do you think there might be another category of writing, that fits in an essay: story telling?

Some of the most compelling talks I've been to are stories winding through a narrative. Conciseness doesn't really fit it, and it is certainly designed for discovery more than persuasion. But it's a bit of both, characterized perhaps by discovery of the audience - though not necessarily of an intended idea, which would make it persuasion.

thunk• 17 years ago

There's another reason people "dislike" Arrington: they love participatory righteous indignation, and Arrington is willing to play sink to it. The ability to bear that, and even revel in it, is something many great people share, and makes me think TC isn't the biggest thing he'll accomplish.

dpapathanasiou• 17 years ago

Reading this reminded me of Ellis and Harper's concept of Core Irrational Beliefs, from their book "A Guide to Rational Living" (http://books.google.com/books?id=3JB9sLEV-SoC&dq=isbn:08...):

"Everyone I meet must treat me just the way I like; otherwise, they are completely worthless!"

The key, of course, is to recognize when you're reacting to those kinds of mental triggers and change your attitude and manner accordingly (which is easier said than done).

dschobel• 17 years ago

Good piece but it neglects another category of writing to its own detriment, that on the opposite end of the spectrum of "pleasing everyone", namely, writing which exists for no other reason than to provoke a response (aka the Ann Coulter school of writing).

My personal experience is that this sort of writing is far more common than the ingratiating kind when you get out of the school/professional environment.

trunnell• 17 years ago

I disagree on the orthogonality of being ingratiating and discovering things.

Sometimes discovery must be done collaboratively. When this is the case, it can be more effective to mind one's social graces. Otherwise, productivity relies on other people ignoring negative social cues. I wouldn't take that bet.

billswift2• 17 years ago

Discovery like creation is the act of a single mind; the discovery or creation often needs to be fleshed out to be really useful, which is often done collaboratively. But without that initial lonely insight collaboration is worthless.

adrianwaj• 17 years ago

I like Michael Arrington because he's pro-Israel and sees the evil in Holocaust deniers, and calls them out on it. That takes balls and brains, especially if you're not Jewish.

-discovery version

edit: I'd better tack on my favourite quote from the essay:

"I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words"

barrkel• 17 years ago

I dislike Arrington primarily because of his attitude and verbal tactics I've heard when he's been on various podcasts - largely Gillmor Gang, IIRC.

He reminded me strongly of a salesman, in that he used simple yet insidious verbal tricks to "wind people up", as we say in these parts, though less self-serving - more in an idly sadistic and demeaning way. He was a negative and arrogant force in the conversations, and they improved when he left.

Techcrunch just seals the deal - it's not a site I have in my reader, I just see it occasionally here or other links.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

That neatly explains my personal affinity towards pg, and my disinterest towards Arrington and many other "journalists" out there today.

Techcrunch is the Entertainment Tonight of Silicon Valley, and I don't find the gossip produced by either medium adds a lot to my life.

That isn't to judge him, and certainly not to "hate" the man, but it is to say that the content is not appealing.

abstractbill• 17 years ago

I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words

Just out of curiosity, have you ever discovered something that you thought would offend enough of your audience that there was no point publishing it?

pg11• 17 years ago

Yes, whole essays.

rms4• 17 years ago

Is that what lead to "What You Can't Say"?

Can you hint at some of those ideas?

bootload• 17 years ago

"... Just out of curiosity, have you ever discovered something that you thought would offend enough of your audience that there was no point publishing it? ..."

read about "the conformist test" ~ http://paulgraham.com/say.html I've written a few things that on reflection after reading "can't say" I've thrown out.

shiro• 17 years ago

Interesting read, but somehow I sensed there's a touch of persuasion in this a lot more than other pg's essays. Maybe persuasion isn't the thing... explanation? It sounded like pg's trying to explain really hard why his essay was in that style, rendering the outcome slightly verbose than his usual essays.

Maybe this is just a false impression. But it may indicate that it is more difficult to talk about oneself than about something/someone else.

[EDIT]: I found why I felt it verbose. The latter part, about pg's essays' attitude to mention facts plainly and succinctly, hence they tended to offend some people, was obvious. So I felt it was unnecessary explanation. Probably it is necessary for different audience.

throwawayac4• 17 years ago

I've met him. Plus a bunch more Valley personalities. I've been underwhelmed by their openness to non-fawning unknowns. Which is amusing me. A couple of years ago I sold my unknown european startup in a private (and NDA'd) transaction for around 45m dollars. After the handcuffs expired I moved to silicon valley last year and since then I've been lurking in the community. I've been talking to everyone and not playing up my background. The arrogance and name-dropping is hilarious. The importance of being in the right circles. I actually have a day job working on a fun project so that I could meet and work with people. Immerse myself in the culture so to speak. I find it there as well. Newly minted Stanford PhDs sure are full of "confidence" shall we say :-)

I'm small fry - don't get me wrong - but the 'personalities' certainly want you to do the running and love the attention. I'm actually pondering starting my next company somewhere else because, frankly, I'm not convinced that the valley echo chamber is the best place to be (unless you are flipping fad companies of dubious long term value).

Let the flames begin ;-)

pclark3• 17 years ago

come to Cambridge, UK. Nice city, people and startups.

throwawayac4• 17 years ago

Nice place and people but awful weather IMHO. I'm rather partial to the warmer climes.

I've heard the traffic is a hassle there? Can you comment?

revorad2• 17 years ago

I'm just starting up in London. Cambridge sounds like a good option. Are living costs really much cheaper?

brown9-22• 17 years ago

Hey if you sold your startup for $45 million, I don't think you count as a small fry at all.

throwawayac4• 17 years ago

Of the 45m I only walked away with ~20m net. But besides that, I was in an industry with a lot of very very overpaid people. Some made that much a year. Kept my feet on the ground.

ojbyrne• 17 years ago

Having spent some time near the center of the whole web 2.0 thing I mostly agree. But I actually did find Arrington to be somewhat better that the norm. Not that that is saying much.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

Brilliant - it's nice to see a different take on the Valley.

I often wonder along the same lines as you mention; the whole fad thing.

Indeed I was chatting to my boss today about the original dot com boom. At the time he had a decent capital to invest but just didn't think the numbers added up (he made his name in fraud investigation so there was more than just gut feeling to it) and so held off.

Interestingly his comment today was "it's happening again; only worse".

throwawayac4• 17 years ago

The valley has a whole has been a letdown. The city is nice but no better than many other cities. South bay is a string of ok small towns with little to no decent nightlife.

I've met many fine engineers, plenty of talented and smart people no doubt, but to be honest it's not that there aren't equally smart and talented people elsewhere. I consider some of the people I work with to be world class... but not better than other world class people I've had the pleasure to deal with. Many of whom are hungrier for it. More wild west.

The valley seems like a middle aged club with lots of sycophant youngsters willing to work themselves to death to get in. Plenty of startups rehashing ideas with the occasional, undervalued imho, gem. I think it's easy to argue that the valley is the center of the universe given the incumbent position of privilege it has. There'll be plenty more money made here and plenty more resulting mutual masturbation.

Maybe it was different in past years.

But I can't help but feel that the smartest money looking to build long term world-changing companies might be wondering.. and starting to look elsewhere for the next revolution. There'll be a pullback given the recent economic upheavals but the world is a big place.

Have you been to greenwich village? Faded glory. The left bank in paris.

Like them I don't think the valley is going away. Just succumbing to middleage spread.

GavinB• 17 years ago

People who think the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers have a problem to explain

This is a standard formulation that implies that you disagree with the statement "the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers."

That isn't the statement with which you want to disagree. You want to disagree with the person who thinks that we could return to the old days, if we were only more heroic.

Try something like this:

Some people think that the reason for the loss of the high-paying union job is a lack of moral courage in the modern age. Our ancestors were giants, and if we were more like them we could return to the golden age.

In fact the truth is simpler than the "fallen civilization" explanation . . .

allenbrunson• 17 years ago

Well, this is a turning point. I'm pretty sure I've read all of pg's essays, and this is the first one that I unambiguously disagree with. I think he has completely overlooked the real reasons Arrington is unpopular, and taken the topic off into the weeds. I guess it's good to have some evidence that I am capable of thinking for myself after all. (Heh.)

netsp2• 17 years ago

It rubs me the wrong way when people make this sort claim about why others criticise them. Sort of a sophisticated version of a 13 year old girl's mother telling her that the other girls are mean to her because they're jealous. Richard Dawkins makes the same claim when he is confornted: "I realise that I might convince more people by being more strategic or diplomatic. I accept that criticism." (paraphrased) I don't really believe that.

I don't really believe pg when he writes: "I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words, and you have to choose one or the other" or ". If you want to please people who are mistaken, you can't simply tell the truth." Actually, it's not that I totally disbelieve him but I think its rationalising in a way that is not entirely intellectually honest. Maybe he rationally agrees with the former. The latter is probably true. But the reasons that we choose our words, our "style" is a lot less rational. In any case, claiming that 'my style is the honest one while the anaemic version that "everyone else" uses and want me to use would be the right one from a persuasion or self promotion perspective,' that is bogus. PG, Arrington & Dawkins have all been successful with their styles. It is doubtful they would have been with the style they describe. Perhaps it is because of the abrasiveness, perhaps not. That's up to discussion.

I understand pg is not defending himself, but he does seem to be defending Arrington in solidarity.

edit:* Something has been bothering me about this comment. I don't disagree with the premise of this essay. I agree with it. Arrington is disliked for reasons unarticulated and possibly unknown to his haters. I'm not even absolutely convinced that this conclusion is wrong. I would be very surprised if the effect it is describing explains everything. A few other explanations seem more likely to me. I am just suspicious of the class of argument put forward in the same way pg is suspicious of the 'heroic generation' arguments.

zackattack2• 17 years ago

If we want to nit-pick about semantics, I don't think it's a true dichotomy, because discovery persuades rationalist readers. In fact, in psychology this is called the Central Route of Persuasion.

Also, your essay reminded me of the caterpillar from alice in wonderland. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbntWU7pG8 - 47 seconds in). What's the isness in yo bizness!

skmurphy• 17 years ago

Because I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words, and you have to choose one or the other.

Reminds me of a quote from Robert Heinlein

"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."

richcollins• 17 years ago

This doesn't help either:

http://www.blogpi.net/wp-content/uploads/arrington-cigar.jpg

adamc• 17 years ago

I was glad to read this, as it addresses questions I've had for some time. There is nothing wrong with writing to figure things out, so long as you don't expect it to persuade or interest many others (although hacker news is obviously a congenial audience for many of them).

10ren• 17 years ago

I am charming; you are respectful; he is ingratiating. It's a loaded term, not a neutral one befitting the dispassionate pursuit of truth, aka discovery.

I found the second example of unions (the "ingratiating" one) easier to understand, because it was concrete, and therefore allowed me into the author's point of view, and had redundancy so I could easily confirm what I thought he meant.

Also, the fact that he admires courage makes me think we have similar values, and therefore, he is worth listening to. There exist extremely intelligent people who lack compassion and wisdom, i.e. foolish villains. I don't think their advice is going to be very helpful.

But the conventional behavior when meeting someone new is to act extra friendly

And now I show what sort of person I am: I read the above line and thought.. ohhhhhh... that's what I've been doing wrong (no, not sarcastic). I've also thought that people who act extra friendly on first meeting are really insincere. But sounds like it's standard communication protocol, and communication is improved by speaking a common language, so I really should start doing this. Thanks pg!

pg11• 17 years ago

I wrote a new version that addresses the problem embodied in the comments here: http://paulgraham.com/pxdremix.html

btilly2• 17 years ago

Reading the article the biggest thing that hit me is that the two versions of the union paragraph are not equivalent at all.

The first one says that the labor movement was not founded by heros. It insinuates that anyone who claims otherwise must despise current labor unions by contrast. And it leaves open the possibility that you're setting the reader up for a sudden about face where you come up with some non-obvious reasoning for why labor unions were founded by heros after all.

The second eulogizes the heros who founded labor unions. Then makes it clear that there is no reason to think that current union leaders would be capable of less if asked. And concludes that the shrinking of unions must be due to external circumstances.

With that in mind I can draw up version 3 that says what version 2 does but not at length.

"Why are labor unions shrinking today? Some say that we have lesser leaders today. Admittedly today's leaders do not regularly face hired thugs, etc like their predecessors did. But there is no reason to believe that they would be any less capable of heroism at need. The cause must be external."

I made the same major points as #3, without causing offense, with fewer words than your short version. The secret is to avoid offense by figuring out what could be offensive and not saying it, rather than figuring out what could be offensive and elaborating on how you're not trying to offend.

pg11• 17 years ago

You know, as I was cutting out the stuff about Arrington, I was thinking to myself, what is the second biggest bicycle shed? What controversial but peripheral issue are people going to seize on now? Labor unions, probably.

Ugh. After spending so much of yesterday arguing about whether people's dislike of Arrington was due purely to their high standards for journalistic integrity, or whether (this being the whole point of a disarming manner) they were also influenced by his manner, I just can't face the prospect of spending any of today arguing about labor unions.

I did not say that the labor movement wasn't founded by heroes, but that is the last I have to say about it.

matthewjbright• 17 years ago

I really like th idea of writing to discover. Learning by discovery and exploration has been my education. It is also the way that I write - to explore, not to convince.

I hadn't been able to articulate this to myself coherently until I came across this on the Khosla Ventures site (complete with Vinod Khosla's notes such as "this is commie horse shit" and "MBA bullshit" (!).

http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/What_makes_entre...

messel2• 17 years ago

"Most writers do. Most writers write to persuade, if only out of habit or politeness. But I don't write to persuade; I write to figure out. I write to persuade a hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader."

This is one of those pearls that makes reading Paul very satisfying. This inside view is vital when it comes to understanding people.

Why we write is essential to crafting the best version of a post/essay/article. I write for the most biased observer, myself. If I can respect the point and style of one of my posts, it gets published and the yardstick I measure content by does fluctuate daily.

When I cover a topic well, I can easily link back to that thought process within other posts to convey my ideas in a well thought out manner. Modularized web commenting if you like the concept allows for more rapid responses of higher quality to ongoing discussions.

The great part is, I can go back and update older concepts with a fresh perspective by writing follow on posts.

Persuade xor Discover

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