Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Two kinds of writers A. Those who think they know what they are talking about B. Those who talk like they don’t know what they’re thinking about No reason these should be mutually exclusive but in practice they mostly are I’m almost exclusively B. All my writing grasps at stuff just outside my cognitive reach
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The big risk for type A, which people like Paul Graham succumb to, is that they don’t actually know and should be in B-mode The big risk for type B is that there is no there there and you’re chasing a mirage in peripheral noise
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I don’t do type A not because I’m afraid of being wrong or that I have no topics I could talk about with confidence, but because talking about stuff I know inside-out bores me. I try to apply it or teach it for pay if the pay is good enough. But there is no intrinsic satisfaction to explainering for me.
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Brad Barrish
@bradbarrish
Do you not find yourself coming to know a thing as you are writing? As someone who has read your writing for a long time, the impression is that, on some level, we (your readers) learn with you.
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Brad Barrish
@bradbarrish
At some point though you do come to know a thing and perhaps writing about it = knowing it inside-out and then you're done with that thing unless someone pays you handsomely to explain it because they don't have attention or desire or whatever to read your posts?
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Never quite to the point where it’s clear enough to teach. I usually quit at 80% as I start getting bored. People who learn with me learn. Those who wait for the simplified explainer never get it. Others have sometimes tried to do it for me but it never quite seems to work.
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