> Writing about the best essay implies there is such a thing, which pseudo-intellectuals will dismiss as reductive, though it follows necessarily from the possibility of one essay being better than another.
Not to be a pseudo-intellectual, but this confuses partial orderings and total orderings. It makes for a fun discussion, but I hope Paul would agree that there's obviously no "best essay", real or hypothetical.
Not to mention that "best" is subjective, so there is no single ordering, but "How to write Paul Graham's favourite essay" wouldn't get as many clicks on HN (ironic for a site with anti-clickbait rules).
In earlier drafts I wrote "the existence of some set of best
essays follows necessarily" but it sounded so pedantic that it didn't seem worth keeping just to protect myself from being accused of not understanding the distinction between a partial and total order. I assumed anyone reading it in good faith would understand what I was saying.
Seems to me something like songwriters in popular music. Proven hitmakers and their expert associates still can't say for sure which of their offerings will resonate like nothing before.
You always have to try or you wouldn't have a chance. But you can't just sit down and determinedly write your best material ever, with any kind of certainty, right when you decide to.
Paul has been putting me off lately. Everyone that disagrees with him is a "pseudo-intellectual" or some other hinted-at bad or incomplete person. The guy loves the smell of his own farts and isn't the towering intellectual or writer than he congratulates himself as.
I found your comment by searching for "it follows necessarily from the possibility of one essay being better than another" because it stood out as a fallacy.
Not surprised that pg proves once again that he is little more than a narrow-minded capitalist, who doesn't actually understand anything about culture, the humanities, literature, or what it is people actually value in those spaces.
His writing is consistently flat, uninspired, and egotistical. He's ok at writing clear prose and this plus his success in relation to YC has made him popular among technical people that also embrace capitalism. Anyone outside of this little cult realizes that pg says very little of value, particularly when he decides to comment on subjects outside of his capitalistic and technical wheelhouses. I have not read a single pg essay that touches on culture, ethics, or general epistemology that has given me anything other than a complete groan of a reaction and astonishment that this is the sort of thinking that passes the "high-quality" bar for the average technologist.
pg can try as hard as he can to write the "best essay". He will never convince this reader since he occupies a completely different world and basically isn't even capable of speaking to this audience in the first place.
...just to lengthen this comment more than is due, the quote is astonishing. I mean, how arrogant do you have to be to claim that the past hundreds of years of literary development, in which the notion of "best essay" is considered at best completely relative and at worst nonsense, must be wrong and that anyone who thinks otherwise must just be a "pseudo intellectual" (read: someone who disagrees with paul graham). He's really high on his own supply.
Not to be a pseudo-intellectual, but this confuses partial orderings and total orderings. It makes for a fun discussion, but I hope Paul would agree that there's obviously no "best essay", real or hypothetical.