I mean not that long after he says: >To disclaim and be clear, there are no simple properties of a text that are absolutely and universally Awful Writing. Not even bad spelling; the end paragraphs in Flowers for Algernon involve some misspellings. Also: >It's in this light that we should consider the kind of Cool Stuff that goes into rational(ist) fiction. Lots of it is opposed to an extreme of Awful Writing; lots of it draws on a particular application of a skill that can be used more generally in good writing. This doesn't change its status from Cool Stuff to almost-always-mandatory Good Writing. It seems to me like he's trying really hard to separate the objective and subjective aspects of writing, making it clear that it's valid for other people to prefer different styles than him. What you're saying isn't really a fair summary imo. He fully allows for differences of taste, he's just trying to find what elements of good writing are consistent *across* differences of taste. However, I still don't really buy his thesis here. >Specific elements of Cool Stuff are often diametrically opposed to specific elements of almost-universally-almost-objectively Awful Writing. It's really tricky to know what "diametrically opposed" means, especially when it comes to something loose like writing fiction. I guess you could say that negative five is the opposite of it positive five, but what is the opposite of War and Peace? Seems like, as an example, he's basically trying to set up "detailed, realistic FTL drive" as the opposite of "bullshit, inconsistent, plot-hole-creating FTL drive" (these aren't direct quotes btw), and good writing should be the opposite of bad writing, which *sort of* makes sense. But it also kind of totally doesn't. Bad writing could just as easily consist of dozens of pages of needlessly overcomplicated (but realistic) technical specifications about how exactly the ship's FTL drive works, while neglecting the actual story and boring the readers to death. This is still the opposite of good writing, but it's the opposite in a completely different way, so it kinda of defeats the concept to me. It's like Goldilocks trying a bowl of porridge that's too hot, and thinking she wants the opposite. No she doesn't! She wants the porridge in the middle. You can't find always find the ideal just by looking for the "opposite" of something you don't like. So, as I often feel when I read Yudkowsky, it seems like he's overconfidently describing a simplistic concept in an overly complex way, yet at the same time, I still don't entirely agree with his critics.