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A comment on The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007). Parent comment

Re:The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007) by MangoToupe on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @10:05PM (#44505711)
Imagine how boring literature (or really most sorts of writing) would be if we optimized it around theories of linguistic efficiency rather than taste. I'm left entirely unconvinced.
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Re:The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007) by riwsky on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @11:52PM (#44506191)
Anyone optimizing for some specific taste already has an implicit theory of linguistic efficiency. Most writers aren’t optimizing for anything at all, and they have no taste, and their writing is boring, and it wastes my time, and I hate it.
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Re:The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007) by MangoToupe on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @12:14AM (#44506289)
> Anyone optimizing for some specific taste already has an implicit theory of linguistic efficiency

I don't follow. How do you connect taste and efficiency in your perspective? Efficiency in what terms? They seem almost unrelated from my perspective.

> Most writers aren’t optimizing for anything at all, and they have no taste, and their writing is boring, and it wastes my time, and I hate it.

Wasting time is probably my favorite reason to read. Cannot disagree more.

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