my oh-so-helpful brain immediately returns “It’s arrogant for you to write a book.”
Ugh. I get this sort of thing when writing, too, and I hate it. For blog posts it comes out as “the insights you think are revelatory are actually banal and somewhat pathetic, and you’re embarrassing yourself by presenting them as heartfelt knowledge. You’re trying to signal wisdom (and lying to yourself about that, incidentally), but you’re actually signaling a contemptible desperation for validation. Any halfway intelligent reader is going to smell that desperation, like it’s roadkill of Pepe le Pew.”
For fiction it’s more like “the scene you think is tense and gripping is actually made of grade A Narm that you can’t see. The one you think is touching is really teenage angsty melodrama.” The bit about transparent reaching for validation stays the same, though.
Who do you think you’re kidding? You look like a fool.
Yeah, that’s pretty close to it. Die, vampire, die.
“the insights you think are revelatory are actually banal and somewhat pathetic, and you’re embarrassing yourself by presenting them as heartfelt knowledge. ”
Let me try to defeat this.
I have learnt something.
That means, I didn’t know, and then I put in effort, and now I know.
Previously, I did not know; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person who did not know.
Even though it’s obvious in hindsight, I still value having the knowledge; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person to value it.
I spent n minutes acquiring this knowledge; barring better data about others I should expect this time to be about average.
Reading this article will take t minutes where t < n.
Articles get written once and read many times; thus, my investment of effort is a net social good. (The time value is (n - t) * readers - n: time expended—time saved.)
PS: this gives you license to spam your article everywhere. You’re committing a social good!
tl;dr: the corollary of “You are not a special snowflake” is “you are not alone”.
Ugh. I get this sort of thing when writing, too, and I hate it. For blog posts it comes out as “the insights you think are revelatory are actually banal and somewhat pathetic, and you’re embarrassing yourself by presenting them as heartfelt knowledge. You’re trying to signal wisdom (and lying to yourself about that, incidentally), but you’re actually signaling a contemptible desperation for validation. Any halfway intelligent reader is going to smell that desperation, like it’s roadkill of Pepe le Pew.”
For fiction it’s more like “the scene you think is tense and gripping is actually made of grade A Narm that you can’t see. The one you think is touching is really teenage angsty melodrama.” The bit about transparent reaching for validation stays the same, though.
Yeah, that’s pretty close to it. Die, vampire, die.
Let me try to defeat this.
I have learnt something.
That means, I didn’t know, and then I put in effort, and now I know.
Previously, I did not know; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person who did not know.
Even though it’s obvious in hindsight, I still value having the knowledge; it is highly unlikely that I am the only person to value it.
I spent n minutes acquiring this knowledge; barring better data about others I should expect this time to be about average.
Reading this article will take t minutes where t < n.
Articles get written once and read many times; thus, my investment of effort is a net social good. (The time value is
(n - t) * readers - n
: time expended—time saved.)PS: this gives you license to spam your article everywhere. You’re committing a social good!
tl;dr: the corollary of “You are not a special snowflake” is “you are not alone”.
When I run that through my own mind, it spits out an accusation of motivated reasoning. Thanks for the attempt though.