On Glorifying Sloppy Writing
The debate around the essay comes down to whether you see it as (1) an anarchist vibe where form, order, patterns, legibility, and even basic conventions of usage don't matter—it's an act of rebellion, a release valve, a social spark, etc.—or, (2) as a work of literature that deserves 50-100 hours of your time, multiple drafts, OCD/perfectionism, and writerly pain that translates to readerly smoothness. We don't need to have 2 camps here. We can have both.
IMO, default mode should be rapid, unhinged, nearly schizophrenic rants, that have little restraint. Of those, maybe 1 in 10 should be slightly edited. And then of those, maybe 1 in 10 should be highly edited. ~3 unhinged rants per day ~= 1 polished essay per month. There's a natural filter. If you're a generative thinker, you have far more ideas than you can ever render coherently, so it makes sense to only polish a small portion.
Venkatesh Rao is an inspiration, and I suspect he has some mammoth ideas hiding behind sloppy Substack posts. As a reader of his, half the time I come across axis-shifting ideas, and the other half I'm frustrated at how his lack of polish adds so much friction to get it. His post today seems like a dig at polished writers without any intellectual substance. That definitely exists, but it's not either/or. I wish VR would take the craft of writing more seriously (sometimes) so more people could understand how he thinks, which could maybe help the writerly types think better. But if you tell weak thinkers to write faster, you don't surface more gems in dumpsters, you get more dumpsters of shit.