I often wondered if Patrick uses unnecessarily convoluted sentences, or if he is simply careful about using the proper terminology, and my English is just not good enough to follow him like a native speaker would.
Some people do not enjoy my writing style. That is fine; it’s a big Internet and there are writers with many styles on it. Some people think my style is poorly considered or unnecessary. I invite them to attempt writing a few million words. It will give one a very considered view on one’s own style.
I have spent half my life working in a foreign-to-me language and so I feel for non-native speakers who try to read my writing. That said, all choices in life have trade-offs. Many publications in the U.S. target a fifth to eighth grade reading level. You likely would have little difficulty reading those publications, much like I have comparatively little difficulty reading Japanese aimed at 5th graders. However, people rarely associate those publications with dense, insightful, textured prose on complicated technical and interdisciplinary subjects. (If some HNers do, awesome; stuff you’ll love is available at the obvious places on the Internet.)
I love your writing. I believe the reason some people do not is because you are very precise, which means using more words. As you know, people are impatient and prefer less words unless they can see clearly how more words were necessary.
In case you needed any encouragement, here's some: Keep going, you're amazing!
> I invite them to attempt writing a few million words. It will give one a very considered view on one’s own style.
That it will! I recently went from [not writing many documents] to [writing a ton of documents], and it turbocharged my reflecting-on-style background process.
Thanks again for your documents over the decades!
...and as a quote in HPMOR put it:
> Apparently people who were in books actually sounded like a book when they talked.
There's a hidden advantage to writing like this. It comes up when, e.g., you're communicating on a controversial topic in a forum like Twitter with a history of forming mobs against folks who communicate on controversial topics.
Suppose an angry reader is looking for a reason to form a mob against you. If you write in simple sentences, that makes it easy for the angry reader to process your statements and go after them. But if your sentences are more complicated, the angry reader needs to decode them logically before they can justify their anger. Angry people tend to be poor at logic. So when they run into this kind of writing, they often get bored before they have a chance to get outraged. You get your message across, and the angry reader moves on to the next tweet in their feed. Everybody wins.
This doesn't work 100% of the time. But if you do it right, it cuts down on a lot of negative virality. I'm not saying this is or isn't Patrick's intentional strategy. I have no idea. It's just one among many consequences of this communication style.
I wish this were true but frankly, at least on most social media sites, people will happily move forward with any kind of mob justice irrespective of the truth or one’s writing style.
I do think that precision in writing is useful for defending one’s prior claims (and for other reasons!) but I think that’s orthogonal to defending one’s self from mass action on today’s internet.
To me, he writes like a precursor of how most of the folks on LessWrong write. I think it's a case of convergent nerd evolution.
Someone else I put in this group is CGP Grey, the YouTuber, specifically his early podcast episodes. That guy's ideas changed my life in a lot of ways as a teenager in ways I think I can't fully describe today.
I was wondering the same lately. It is interesting to compare his tweets to pg's tweets which are the complete opposite: patio11's tweets feel like oddly specific and extremely hard to parse while pg's tweets seem very generic and easy to parse yet insightful. Honestly the only reason I follow patio11 is that his style and content is so different from other people I follow that I feel I need this diversification.
pg explicitly tries to write very simply, which I've definitely appreciated and tried to learn from. However, I think Patrick's unambiguous style is also interesting in its own way, and he is writing very specifically about how (human) systems operate at a level which very very few people write. Others make generic statements like "the Post Office usually delivers mail on Sundays", while he might say "the Post Office has an obligation to deliver mail on Sundays unless one of several [adjective] scenarios occurs, which tends to happen once every [adjective] weeks". I think the former is easier to read but doesn't convey as much specific information.
> I often wondered if Patrick uses unnecessarily convoluted sentences
One of my weird qualifications is evaluating text complexity. Most of Patrick’s writing is simply highly accurate and precise erudite language. Frankly, compared to other writers at a comparable level of erudition, his writing is downright economical rather than convoluted.
His texts tend to be very information dense in a way that I’m not sure all readers appreciate or value.
>. or if he is simply careful about using the proper terminology
Yep. All that.
> and my English is just not good enough to follow him like a native speaker would.
Probably (not sure about your English proficiency level), but that’s not a knock on your English.
Note that Patrick’s writing is very high level, and I think many native speakers don’t read his texts with a high degree of fluency. Specifically, they simply don’t make it through the text, they don’t understand what he wrote, or they are not able to identify the preciseness and accuracy (and sometimes artfulness) with which he communicates his ideas.
On a personal level, I am a big fan of his writing — it’s just a delight to read material on a complex topic with a high degree of confidence that what he says is extremely accurate.
Another author who I think writes at a high level is Scott Alexander of slatestarcodex and astralcodexten (or wherever he writes these days) — very high brow style on complex topics. It’s not for everyone. Fwiw, I’ve had to read (and reread) some of Scott Alexander’s pieces in small chunks with breaks to process what I had read — sometimes it’s just oozing with intellectual goodness.
For someone who writes in finance in a more casual style, I recommend Matt Levine and his newsletter Money Stuff (free).
I had never read Patrick McKenzie's writing before, but the linked article contains a link to a popular article of his from 2012[1], which I read, and his substack[2], a few articles of which I skimmed as well.
The salary negotiation article really doesn't come off as that formal and high level, to me; the tone is rather casual, although it requires knowledge of some advanced vocabulary like "fungible" and "administrativia". I'm not saying this to brag about my reading level; I'm genuinely a bit confused.
I had been expecting something like the preface from the second edition of Jane Eyre[3].
I've come to the same conclusion as you. I sometimes find it very hard to parse, but given all the praise he gets from very smart individuals, I put it down to not being native.
patio11|2 years ago
Some people do not enjoy my writing style. That is fine; it’s a big Internet and there are writers with many styles on it. Some people think my style is poorly considered or unnecessary. I invite them to attempt writing a few million words. It will give one a very considered view on one’s own style.
I have spent half my life working in a foreign-to-me language and so I feel for non-native speakers who try to read my writing. That said, all choices in life have trade-offs. Many publications in the U.S. target a fifth to eighth grade reading level. You likely would have little difficulty reading those publications, much like I have comparatively little difficulty reading Japanese aimed at 5th graders. However, people rarely associate those publications with dense, insightful, textured prose on complicated technical and interdisciplinary subjects. (If some HNers do, awesome; stuff you’ll love is available at the obvious places on the Internet.)
riemannzeta|2 years ago
In case you needed any encouragement, here's some: Keep going, you're amazing!
Xorathena|2 years ago
> I invite them to attempt writing a few million words. It will give one a very considered view on one’s own style.
That it will! I recently went from [not writing many documents] to [writing a ton of documents], and it turbocharged my reflecting-on-style background process.
Thanks again for your documents over the decades!
...and as a quote in HPMOR put it:
> Apparently people who were in books actually sounded like a book when they talked.
idlewords|2 years ago
edouard-harris|2 years ago
Suppose an angry reader is looking for a reason to form a mob against you. If you write in simple sentences, that makes it easy for the angry reader to process your statements and go after them. But if your sentences are more complicated, the angry reader needs to decode them logically before they can justify their anger. Angry people tend to be poor at logic. So when they run into this kind of writing, they often get bored before they have a chance to get outraged. You get your message across, and the angry reader moves on to the next tweet in their feed. Everybody wins.
This doesn't work 100% of the time. But if you do it right, it cuts down on a lot of negative virality. I'm not saying this is or isn't Patrick's intentional strategy. I have no idea. It's just one among many consequences of this communication style.
shuckles|2 years ago
atdrummond|2 years ago
I do think that precision in writing is useful for defending one’s prior claims (and for other reasons!) but I think that’s orthogonal to defending one’s self from mass action on today’s internet.
hiAndrewQuinn|2 years ago
Someone else I put in this group is CGP Grey, the YouTuber, specifically his early podcast episodes. That guy's ideas changed my life in a lot of ways as a teenager in ways I think I can't fully describe today.
nadam|2 years ago
singhrac|2 years ago
csa|2 years ago
One of my weird qualifications is evaluating text complexity. Most of Patrick’s writing is simply highly accurate and precise erudite language. Frankly, compared to other writers at a comparable level of erudition, his writing is downright economical rather than convoluted.
His texts tend to be very information dense in a way that I’m not sure all readers appreciate or value.
>. or if he is simply careful about using the proper terminology
Yep. All that.
> and my English is just not good enough to follow him like a native speaker would.
Probably (not sure about your English proficiency level), but that’s not a knock on your English.
Note that Patrick’s writing is very high level, and I think many native speakers don’t read his texts with a high degree of fluency. Specifically, they simply don’t make it through the text, they don’t understand what he wrote, or they are not able to identify the preciseness and accuracy (and sometimes artfulness) with which he communicates his ideas.
On a personal level, I am a big fan of his writing — it’s just a delight to read material on a complex topic with a high degree of confidence that what he says is extremely accurate.
Another author who I think writes at a high level is Scott Alexander of slatestarcodex and astralcodexten (or wherever he writes these days) — very high brow style on complex topics. It’s not for everyone. Fwiw, I’ve had to read (and reread) some of Scott Alexander’s pieces in small chunks with breaks to process what I had read — sometimes it’s just oozing with intellectual goodness.
For someone who writes in finance in a more casual style, I recommend Matt Levine and his newsletter Money Stuff (free).
trealira|2 years ago
The salary negotiation article really doesn't come off as that formal and high level, to me; the tone is rather casual, although it requires knowledge of some advanced vocabulary like "fungible" and "administrativia". I'm not saying this to brag about my reading level; I'm genuinely a bit confused.
I had been expecting something like the preface from the second edition of Jane Eyre[3].
[1]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
[2]: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/
[3]: https://victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/janeeyre/pre...
unknown|2 years ago
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zith|2 years ago
idlewords|2 years ago
pc86|2 years ago
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