Continuing on with my mini-series on the topic of writing, I wrote earlier about why writing alone sometimes is not enough.
I write a lot. Writing is the genesis of the idea — it’s where you begin to brain dump the ideas, figure out your standpoint and what you are trying to say.
But writing alone does not guarantee that what you say will be effective.
Your writing needs to hold truth. Objective truth.
Strongly held beliefs do not equate to truth.
It can be counterproductive for a reader to read something half-formed, and is how misinformation occurs.
Chamath essentially describes the same concept in the most recent All in One podcast episode at 1:00:00.
He describes how the nature of print newspaper used to reward objective truth and quality. It was what generated revenue. The more objective your information, the more trust you earned from readers and advertisers alike.
However, now in the days of the infinite scroll with digital media — the business model of truth has become inefficient.
Why spend time and resources to assess truth only for it to be buried in the sea of content that exists? The business model transforms into who can shout the loudest and stir up the most emotions.
When we reward speed of content, quality suffers.
This potentially creates biases and self-narratives that deliver only an aspect of the truth. There will be a “gap between what [people[ say is the narrative and what the facts are.”
Yina Huang 