Re:Ask HN: Strategies for Being More Eloquent?
by __derek__ on Friday December 09, 2022 @01:32PM
(#33924812)
If you want labels for misbehavior like that, check out Grice's maxims of conversation.
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Re:Ask HN: Strategies for Being More Eloquent?
by 1attice on Friday December 09, 2022 @03:59PM
(#33926400)
That you read unintentional variation as misbehaviour is like rejecting food not made at McDonalds.
Actually, this is a great teachable moment. This is the crux of it.
Engineers value precise repetition, what Deleuze calls 'mechanical' repetition.
Writing, like cuisine, is about 'difference that contains its own differencing', again, as Deleuze put it. (Sounds better in French but if you chew on it you can suck the meaning-marrow from the consonants).
Eloquence comes from the space between symmetries, which is why it's so hard for engineers to master.
Indeed, 'mastery' is already quite the wrong tenor