>David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader.

He expands on this in his conversation with Bryan Garner (of Garner's Modern English Grammar) published as Quack this Way, and I think he gets to the core issue, which is that your ideas are not interesting to anyone but you; if you are showing off how smart you are, you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care.

Infinite Jest is a also a good example of something which goes against TFA's point, it opens with a very sterile, impersonal, literal and completely disconnected first person narrative, he gives us nothing to care about. But it evolves, but he still doesn't give us anything to care about, just has the narration turn in on itself despite it seeming to have nothing to turn in onto. All he really gives us is the suggestion that there is something more than what we can see. He gets us interested and curious but I don't think we really care at that point.

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tolerance 2 hours ago | parent [-]

To his credit and with the exception of mentioning an objective to show his smarts off to readers (which I don’t think he wants to do anyhow) Gwern informs us that he is assuming that we will find what he writes as useful as he does, because his objective is to write things that are useful to himself:

> The goal of these pages is not to be a model of concision, maximizing entertainment value per word, or to preach to a choir by elegantly repeating a conclusion. Rather, I am attempting to explain things to my future self, who is intelligent and interested, but has forgotten. What I am doing is explaining why I decided what I did to myself and noting down everything I found interesting about it for future reference. I hope my other readers, whomever they may be, might find the topic as interesting as I found it, and the essay useful or at least entertaining–but the intended audience is my future self.

— <https://gwern.net/about#target-audience>

We can reconcile this with the purport of the writing of his that we’re discussing now—it’s a notice with his future self in mind. And we can compare and contrast the above quote and the aforementioned piece with some of PG’s writing which I find is meant to be public-facing literature at full bloom. [1][2]

I think there’s a difference between 'writing for my future self’ and ‘writing with the public in mind’. Howard & Barton (1986) would argue that they represent separate stages of the writing process and I agree with that and prefer writing that is primed for the latter form. [3] I associate the maxim “First, make me care” with the latter as well and by-and-large feel like Gwern’s writing—that which I’ve come across most frequently—is geared toward the former form. Which I’m sure serves him well, as well as I’m sure it’s served well to those who enjoy his work. I’m yet to determine whether that’s a good or bad thing.

As I’ve cited earlier, some consider Gwern's writing to evoke a sort of misanthropy. But hey...I’m sure there’s someone else to say the same about Paul Graham and his stuff. I’ll withhold judgement against the both of them on that matter—for now—lest I get caught unprepared to be deemed one myself.

[1] <https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html>

[2] <https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html>

[3] <https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813>

	▲	ofalkaed an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think we need to credit him or reconcile anything, what he says is not wrong or hypocritical, it is just his view of what makes a good blog post. I disagree with him but the only consequence for him is that I won't read his blog unless I feel compelled to because I want to join in the discussion on somewhere like HN and don't want to be one of those people who interjects into a discussion on an article they did not read, even if the conversation is clearly about the title and not the article or marginally related topics or I simply want to make a marginally related comment. For me, it is the way he presents and develops ideas that prevents me from reading, it reminds me of reading a tutorial on how to reach his conclusion. Some people probably like the style, some probably don't care about the style, and some like me struggle to even skim a short post like TFA. But I find a great deal of what is on the internet to be difficult to read and think nothing of reading a book like Infinite Jest in a week. I am not the target audience. Edit: Fixed some editing weirdness, I think.