In the post Why good writing is one of the hardest things ever I discuss why writing is possibly harder than STEM, even ‘hard math’, but I wish to expound on this. As someone who has done both I think I am qualified to make this determination. I’ve written math papers, read countless papers, done some coding, read plenty of medical research reports (such as in regard to posts on obesity, diets, and metabolism), done research into quantitative finance (e.g. options pricing models and developing strategies), etc. So I guess I can say I’m ‘fully immersed’ in STEM. (The only thing I have not done enough is research into AI, but Zvi has that covered.) On the opposite verbal side of the spectrum is writing this blog and reading others’ blogs.
So why is writing harder?
I believe a lot of confusion from math, or why math has the notoriety of being a hard subject, comes from poor exposition. I have seen this myself, such as papers or textbooks where key steps are omitted or explained poorly. Often the author explains a lesser concept in great detail and then insufficiently explains the key concept, or fails to tie the intermediary steps with the crucial step that leads to the final result. I think math ability is to some extent innate and correlated with IQ, but it’s not as hopeless or innate as verbal ability. (This is different with competitive-level math, in which innate ability plays a greater role, as practice tends to be controlled for.)
I think tutors can help immensely. Whenever I tutored math, concepts suddenly ‘clicked’, when the textbook and the teacher’s instructions were insufficient. If a certain notation didn’t make sense, I could explain what the author meant and show the omitted intermediary steps as to how a result was obtained. This is also observed by Bloom’s so-called “2 sigma” phenomenon. Likewise, I too was tutored in math.
But when it comes to writing, unlike math, almost everyone already knows how to do it! Everyone writes, whether it’s social media, text messaging, email, or the occasional blog post. It’s not like people cannot write; they can, but just aren’t that good at it. And because the rules are already known and almost everyone is familiar with the basics, such as how to write sentences, it’s not like poor exposition is the problem, unlike math.
There is no critical impasse that must be cleared for writing skill to be unlocked. Writing allows for great precision in terms of articulating something, but ironically, there are no precise rules or steps on how to do it well, which in turn makes it hard as there’s no blueprint. Yet in spite of this arbitrariness, there is undeniably skill involved. Successful writers consistently put out quality prose that is well-received by the intended audience, but it’s not possible to reverse engineer this. This makes writing more innate than math owing to the near-impossibility of teaching good writing, only that good writing exists and we know it when we see it.
Again, it bears repeating that writing is damn hard. Pundits constantly deplore how high school or college grads cannot write well or how schools do not teach students how to write well:
This does not come as a surprise at all to me that students cannot write well. It’s like saying that most people cannot fly a plane well. Those who can are called pilots, which is a profession, yet for some reason pundits have this notion that being a writer or good at writing is something that you just ‘pick up’ through cultural osmosis or is involuntary, like speech or breathing, but this is no more true than picking up the piano and expecting to play at a concert level. A few years of school does not suddenly make someone a competent writer, any more than a few years of music lessons make someone a professional musician.
The Washington Posts asks “Why can’t college graduates write coherent prose?” I have been writing for years, and got good marks in school for my writing, and still my prose isn’t always that good or could be improved. Many famous, successful authors have been criticized for their prose, such as Ayn Rand or Stephen King, the latter whose writing is described as “blandly functional, a ‘plain’ style occasionally gussied up with pseudo-colorful idioms.” What chance does a college grad stand when even professionals not uncommonly fall short?
The final reason: unlike STEM, a much lower tolerance for mistakes as far as readers are concerned. As the aforementioned link discusses, for writing to succeed the entire piece has to be good. There cannot be logical fallacies, weak spots, unfounded assumptions, etc. as those will be noticed and condemn the writing to failure. The typical consumer of short-form non-fiction is much less forgiving than other mediums of content, such as cinema, podcasts, or YouTube.
People will watch in rapt attention as a podcaster interviews a guest who pauses and repeats himself for 2 hours, but will hit the back button without hesitation, sometimes proclaiming if comments permit “I stopped reading here” just to make it abundantly clear that his time was wasted as he goes back to his 2-hour podcast. A math paper that presents novel results will not be doomed by poor exposition, unlike writing, where it has to be 100-percent dialed in from start to end. Not only does the writing have to logically make sense, but unlike in math, aesthetics like ‘turn of phrase’ matter too.