Steven Pinker’s Rules for Good Writing

The Moving Mind

Steven Pinker on the Science of Great Writing

This video is based on an interview with Harvard professor and author Steven Pinker, who discusses his philosophy and practical rules for good writing, particularly for non-fiction in the age of Large Language Models (LLMs). Pinker identifies the “curse of knowledge”—the difficulty a writer has in imagining what it’s like for the audience not to know what the writer knows—as the biggest flaw in communication. He advocates for prioritizing the reader’s perspective and emphasizes the importance of using concrete, visual language over abstract jargon, often recommending the use of examples to clarify generalizations. Pinker also addresses the aesthetic qualities of good prose, such as rhythm, sound (euphony), and the beauty found in classic writing, which he contrasts with the generic, well-structured, but prosaic output of current LLMs. He concludes by reflecting on how the success of LLMs might cause him to reconsider the role of pattern abstraction in language and cognition.

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