I agree that Pinker’ advice is moderate — e.g. he doesn’t prohibit authors from self-reference.
But this isn’t because classic style is moderate — actually classic style is very strict — e.g. it does prohibit authors from self-reference.
Rather, Pinker’s advice is moderate because he weakly endorses classic style. His advice is “use classic style except in rare situations where this would be bad on these other metric.
If I’ve read him correctly, then he might agree with all the limitations of classic style I’ve mentioned.
(But maybe I’ve misread Pinker. Maybe he endorses classic style absolutely but uses “classic style” to refer to a moderate set of rules.)
I agree that classic style as described by Thomas and Turner is a less moderate and more epistemically dubious way of writing, compared to what Pinker endorses. For example, from chapter 1 of Clear and Simple as the Truth:
Classic style is focused and assured. Its virtues are clarity and simplicity; in a sense so are its vices. It declines to acknowledge ambiguities, unessential qualifications, doubts, or other styles.
...
The style rests on the assumption that it is possible to think disinterestedly, to know the results of disinterested thought, and to present them without fundamental distortion....All these assumptions may be wrong, but they help to define a style whose usefulness is manifest.
I also agree that it is a bad idea to write in a maximally classic style in many contexts. But I think that many central examples of classic style writing are:
Not in compliance with the list of rules given in this post
Better writing than most of what is written on LW
It is easy to find samples of writing used to demonstrate characteristics of classic style in Pure and Simple as the Truth that use the first person, hedge, mention the document or the reader, or use the words listed in the “concepts about concepts” section. (To this post’s credit, it is easy to get the impression that classic style does outright exclude these things, because Thomas and Turner, using classic style, do not hedge their explicit statements about what is or is not classic style presumably because they expect the reader to see this clearly through examples and elaboration.)
Getting back to my initial comment, it is not clear to me what kind of writing this post is actually about. It’s hard to identify without examples, especially when the referenced books on style do not seem to agree with what the post is describing.
I agree that Pinker’ advice is moderate — e.g. he doesn’t prohibit authors from self-reference.
But this isn’t because classic style is moderate — actually classic style is very strict — e.g. it does prohibit authors from self-reference.
Rather, Pinker’s advice is moderate because he weakly endorses classic style. His advice is “use classic style except in rare situations where this would be bad on these other metric.
If I’ve read him correctly, then he might agree with all the limitations of classic style I’ve mentioned.
(But maybe I’ve misread Pinker. Maybe he endorses classic style absolutely but uses “classic style” to refer to a moderate set of rules.)
I agree that classic style as described by Thomas and Turner is a less moderate and more epistemically dubious way of writing, compared to what Pinker endorses. For example, from chapter 1 of Clear and Simple as the Truth:
I also agree that it is a bad idea to write in a maximally classic style in many contexts. But I think that many central examples of classic style writing are:
Not in compliance with the list of rules given in this post
Better writing than most of what is written on LW
It is easy to find samples of writing used to demonstrate characteristics of classic style in Pure and Simple as the Truth that use the first person, hedge, mention the document or the reader, or use the words listed in the “concepts about concepts” section. (To this post’s credit, it is easy to get the impression that classic style does outright exclude these things, because Thomas and Turner, using classic style, do not hedge their explicit statements about what is or is not classic style presumably because they expect the reader to see this clearly through examples and elaboration.)
Getting back to my initial comment, it is not clear to me what kind of writing this post is actually about. It’s hard to identify without examples, especially when the referenced books on style do not seem to agree with what the post is describing.