Orwell was the outraged opponent of totalitarianism and the muddy thinking in which evil cloaks itself
When I see such adulation for Orwell, I can't help but conclude that he was a master of applause lights for smart people. He was a fantastically good writer, and his books and essays do make some good points, but he was nothing like the paragon of clear thinking and intellectual honesty that this post makes him out to be.
For start, that particular essay ("Politics and the English Language") is full of evident nonsense and self-contradiction. See e.g. the criticisms on Language Log by David Beaver and Geoffrey Pullum. (I find it amusing how nobody seems to notice that this essay condemns the evasive use of passive voice, and yet its very first sentence uses the phrase "it is generally assumed that..." while being completely evasive on who's doing the assuming.)
Moreover, it's not like Orwell's own political thinking was exceptionally clear or close to reality. Yes, he was one of those people who get disenchanted with ideologies quickly when they see their awful results in practice instead of making excuses and rationalizations. However, his own political and economic ideas were hopelessly naive and muddled, and many people who lived and wrote at the same time had a much closer grip on reality, even though they are nowadays forgotten.
I take Orwell's style advice (and Strunk and White's style advice) as meaning something like, "if we were to underline in red the worst writing of poor writers, and then go back trough and suggest improvements, the following suggestions would be among the most common that we would make." Note that this way of putting it is not absolute. For example, if I were to go through a paper, find the worst writing, suggest improvements, and then notice that a large fraction of my suggestions would involve switching a passive voice to active, then this would (a) probably be worth noting and worth putting in a compact style guide, and at the same time (b) not be the same as an absolute recommendation that all writers always avoid passive voice.
In short, I take the advice to avoid passive constructions in something like the following way: "if you use the passive voice, and if you're not a successful writer, there's a fair chance that you could easily improve your style. Try the active voice, compare it to your initial passive construction, and then choose the one that seems better." That may often result in a writer (one who is open to the possibility of improvement) switching from passive to active.
The advice won't make a writer into an Orwell, but it could make a poor writer into a merely mediocre writer, which is a worthwhile goal.
That Orwell violates the absolute version of his style advice doesn't negate the value of the advice, any more than the value of training wheels is negated by the fact that experienced bicyclists don't use them.
David Beaver's essay seems at times to be trying too hard to find fault with Orwell's essay. For example, the last bit about rule-breaking strikes me as silly. It's also suspiciously convenient for Beaver's own argument. After all, the statement (to "break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous") is precisely the softening of the advice that disarms Beaver's previous criticisms. For, Beaver's criticisms rely on the (superficially) absolute way in which the advice is stated. Orwell tells us for example to "never use the passive where you can use the active." The "never" makes the advice absolute, admitting no exceptions. This is critically important to Beaver's own criticism, because Beaver immediately supplies a counterexample from the very essay in which the advice appears. Disproof by counterexample only works on absolute statements - statements that allow no exceptions. If the statement had been written more softly, as advice to take special care when dealing with passive constructions, then the counterexample would have proven nothing. And so when Orwell softens his own advice by writing, "break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous", Beaver's argument is undermined. It's interesting, then, that Beaver attacks it on silly logic-chopping grounds.
However, his own political and economic ideas were hopelessly naive and muddled, and many people who lived and wrote at the same time had a much closer grip on reality, even though they are nowadays forgotten.
Prompted me to issue a respectful downvote and post a rebuttal from the man himself.
By the way, we do need some summaries for the upcoming posts "Doublethink" and "Why I'm Blooking". I'm going to be fairly busy for the next couple of days, so if someone wants to read ahead...
Does "Why I'm Blooking" really need a summary? It's hardly part of the sequence. It's an extremely obsolete description of what EY was doing at the time!
I'd planned to do it. It is fairly out of date, but for anyone reading the sequences for the first time I figured it could help them understand what he was going for.
Today's post, Rationality and the English Language was originally published on 12 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Applause Lights, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.