Funny things you notice when you write for a long time. Reading motives for essays are cyclical. Ten years ago people read mostly for “how” questions. Five years ago they read for “why” questions. Now they read for “what” questions. We’ll be back to “how” by 2024.
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My natural sweet spot is “what” with reasonable ability to cover the “why” beat and sucking at the “how”. My kind of writing felt very countercyclical 10 years ago. Now it feels kinda mainstream. If I were the ambitious type now would be the right time to double down on stuff.
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Fortunately for those who are already sick of me, I’m not very ambitious.
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Tim Ferris would probably not have been able to launch the kind of “how” based career he did today. The GFC years were a how-to boom because so many unprecedented tools were emerging simultaneously.
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“Why” is a good question for insight porn and understanding a TINA world. When it seems like There Is No Alternative, it is useful to ask why things are the way they are. And good answers deliver a nice little dopamine hit of recognition relief. Ambiguity resolves into certainty.
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“What” doesn’t deliver as much by way of aha insight porn payoff. It is a synthetic, constructionist question. There is no TINA way the world necessarily is, and many soft ways it could be. Satisfaction moves from analytical insight to synthetic success. You see what must be done
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End of conversation
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For political ideology I think the what questions are more interesting to ask people than questions of ought. Instead of “What should the state do?” you ask “Describe what the state is.”
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Still a bit unclear. What are good examples of "what" essays?
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