> The reason is that it makes the essay easier to read. It's less work to read writing that flows well. How does that help the writer? Because the writer is the first reader

Note that the writer's judgement only serves as an initial proxy for how well the essay reads. This implies that the reader, whoever that is, is the true judge of how well it reads. My point is that that group is ill defined.

If it were sufficient for the writer to be the only judge of how well something reads, surely PG wouldn't feel the need to have other proofread his essays. And surely it is not sufficient for someone who lacks taste to judge their own writing as good.

The way I read that statement is the same as the startup advice of "build what you would yourself want". However you still have to validate that the market exists and is big.

There is really nothing profound in that paragraph anyway, all it is saying is that a writer should edit and proofread their work. That whole paragraph could be deleted honestly. It is obvious table stakes for one to edit their work. What differentiates good from bad is a matter of taste + who is judging it.

So one thing to note is that the essay mentions that it refers specifically to "writing that is used to develop ideas" vs. "writing meant to describe others ideas".

The way I interpret this is that it refers to claims that build on each other to come to a conclusion. So the way to test for truth is to somehow test each claim and the conclusion, which could vary in difficulty based on the kind of claims being made.

As this essay exemplifies, it is difficult to test for truth if you make broad claims that are so imprecise that they can't be verified or don't tell you anything interesting when verified using reasonable assumptions.

The issue with this article is that it is very imprecise.

Are the standards for whether something “sounds bad” based on the average person’s reading or the intended audience.

In its most general form (how the median article sounds to the median person), the argument is pretty vacuous.

Most writing discusses simple ideas and they should sound good (familiar, easy, pleasurable) to the median person.

But the most valuable kind of writing could sound tedious and filled with incomprehensible terminology to the median person but concise and interesting to the intended audience.

The current way the idea is stated doesn’t sound correct because you can convincingly defend all 4 quadrants of the truth table.

> “So here we have the most exciting kind of idea: one that seems both preposterous and true.”

Am I missing something or is the “seems true” part taking too many liberties here?

If anything, as described in the previous few sentences, the premise seems false, not true.

Kind of ironic since the line sounds right but isn’t rigorously right, so it undercuts the main argument.

What's a use case are you interested in re: video?