Discussion
the jsomers.net blog.
Darkphibre: I was hesitant about this article being interesting, or a good use of my limited time, but it turns out it was well written and held an interesting insight!I find it fascinating that, even aware of the importance of the phrase, I tend to gloss over it as one conceptual unit and hardly even register its existence, like the
onionisafruit: It’s a fine phrase to let your reader know what the eventual conclusion will be, but you need to back up that conclusion to have any credibility.
keybored: I used to like having a job staring at a screen, and be quite an AI skeptic. But it turns out that the AI was just better at it. Now I’m making a career pivot to [insert trade/organic farming/retirement (I have stock options)].
axus: It turns out that writers don't always tell the truth!
allenu: I hate the phrase as people often use it to take a subjective statement and present it as objective fact. I think it's overused in communication, but it does provide a lot of utility, but it can get grating once you notice how often people use it.
esafak: It turns out you can write a whole article about something obvious?
nimonian: I hope the irony of this comment isn't lost on the author of the article
zephen: It turns out I'll never get those three minutes back.
loevborg: I'm a big Rich Hickey fan. He's a big user of a (to me) peculiar variant of the phrase, "it ends up": a total of 144 times in https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcriptsIt also struck me as a bit of a sleight of hand - but maybe it's just rhetorical flourish. Or more charitably you could say it's inevitable - in a conference talk of finite length, you can't possibly back up every assertion with detailed evidence. "It turns out" or "it ends up" are then a shorthand way of referring to your own experience.
j_m_b: Oh I have some other common phrases I've been collecting!"to be honest" "...the thing..." "I mean.." "Yah yah yah" people say this rapidly. It seems rude and dismissive to me so I've stopped doing it
vanschelven: Before clicking the link I thought this was going to be about over-usage of the term by LLMs... it's not in my personal "red flag" list but it does seem to have a general applicability that's not connected to actually having something to say that fits well with LLMs
cristoperb: This is a nitpick, but since this essay is over 15 years old now I don't think the author will mind. This phrase always rankles me:> Let me explain what I mean.It turns out that if you're writing an essay or a youtube script you don't have to tell me that you're going to explain something to me before you explain it to me. I guess it acts as a "hack" to try to impart some gravity to what follows without actually having to write a convincing introduction, but unlike "it turns out" it can almost always just be deleted to improve the flow.
projektfu: If you're writing a YouTube script, just, stop. They're so tiresome.
beezlewax: You also explained what you were going to explain here
cristoperb: I guess it's not prefatory remarks or disclaimers that I find so grating, but the explicit "I'll explain" (or worse, faux conversational "May I explain?" "Let me explain") followed immediately by the explanation.
keyringlight: Language is filled with those types of phrases, the one which bugs me once it was pointed out (even though I use it myself) is "to be honest...", which could carry the implication anything said without that qualifier may be dishonest. What including those phrases seem to come down to is an informal style, a bit more acceptable in a spoken conversation but for written it probably depends on the audience.Something I'd wonder about is if usage of it has changed based on the medium people use over the years, whether that's in-person, telephone, writing letters, or computer/smartphone writing. Has using computers for short form conversations allowed conversational phrases to bleed into formal writing.
alpaca128: I also reduced the use of those phrases, but more because they don't do much other than making the text longer. Except for things like "in my experience" or "as I understand" to signal that they're not meant as factual statements.
travisjungroth: That jumped out to me because you see it in YouTube videos so much now. I was surprised at the age of this post.
mkehrt: From The Mote in God's Eye:"Wrong," said Renner."The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, 'That turns out not to be the case.'"
jonahx: Interesting rebuttal written by a HN reader when the original was published and made it to the front page in 2010:https://web.archive.org/web/20100309032112/http://blog.ethan...
tptacek: I'd argue the most interesting part of this piece isn't what it says about Paul Graham, but rather the observation it makes about writing. I think about "It Turns Out" all the time, and it's virtually never because I'm in that moment caring about something Graham wrote.
jrm4: Haven't seen anyone else mention the following - but it more or less fulfills the same connotative role as the passive voice, no? Takes focus off the agency of -- well, the speaker, but actually anyone?
pvillano: If the literal meaning doesn't make sense, derive the meaning from the way it is used."To be honest" typically means "Here is an opinion that I'm embarrassed to share, and would rather lie about"They're not lying about everything else, they're lying about that one thing, every other time.e.g. "I tell people my favorite movie is 'The Godfather', but, to be honest, it's actually Ratatouille"
SoftTalker: It turns out that "It turns out" is just another overused corpspeak cliche that sounds important and thoughtful on the surface but actually betrays a low-effort level of writing.
gwd: This was pointed out humorously by Douglas Adams:> "..am I alone in finding the expression 'it turns out' to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It's great. It's hugely better than its predecessors 'I read somewhere that...' or the craven 'they say that...' because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it's research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight."
turnsout: Turns out I was onto something
DetroitThrow: "It Turns Out" (2010)user?id=turnsout (2020)
bryanrasmussen: Id Turns Out? There's 16 numbers from d to t, counting t. 2010 + 16. OMG Turns out they were on to something!
rmellow: I think y'all are on something.
MattGrommes: One of my favorite additions to this phrase is Merlin Mann's use of "double turns out". This is useful for stuff like"X is bad for you.""Turns out X is actually great for you and it was Big Y spreading misinformation.""Actually, turns out X is only terrible for dogs but nobody remembers that part of the story."
wongarsu: There is however another very powerful aspect of the phrase: it suggests that something is not obvious. This makes it very powerful when correcting someone without making them feel like they said something stupid. "The sun is yellow" "You'd think that. But it turns out that without the atmosphere the sun is actually a blueish white, and high on the sky it's a neutral white"
ErroneousBosh: There's a collection of Ben Goldacre's articles compiled in a book called "I Think You'll Find It's A Bit More Complicated Than That", which is a phrase I want to put on a T-shirt, or possibly my Teams background at work.
jakub_g: Semi-related, something that kind of irritates me is the usage of "as" in online newspapers headlines: "$Something-is-happening as $Something-else-is-happening" It's usually written in a way that might be suggesting a direct link between the two things to a layman, but often there's none, other than the fact those two things are happening around the same time.This can be disorienting when the reader is not familiar with the subject discussed, and lead them to wrong conclusions.
GuinansEyebrows: Reminds me of Seinfeld."I gotta tell you, I am loving this Yada Yada thing. You know, I can gloss over my whole life story."
ta2112: "But you yada yadaed over the best part.""No I mentioned the bisque."
SunshineTheCat: It kinda reminds me of replying to a statement with "So...it's come to this..."My friends and I use to do this all the time for no particular reason except to turn an otherwise ordinary conversation into challenge that can only be resolved by mortal combat.Of course, we did it jokingly with each other. But when someone we didn't know heard us do this they were genuinely confused with what we were so offended by, which was half the fun.
pvillano: Here are a few more scrutiny-deflecting phrases* just: "Just rewrite it in Rust"* simply: "To win at Jenga, simply remove one block from the bottom and put it on top."* should: "We shouldn't have to wait"I hate "should" the most because it can mean obligation, expectation, recommendation, or ideal. Any time you find yourself using "should", you should(I recommend) substitute something more specific
rpdillon: This mirrors my personal list very closely. I don't mind "it turns out" or "to be honest", but "just" and "should" I feel are often used to manipulate someone into agreeing.
pmichaud: I think it's more like a sign post in the text. At the start of any paragraph (or sentence, really) the text may go literally anywhere--could be a new thought, a continuation of an implicit list, an explanation of what came previous, or anything else.If you say something weird or apparently unsupported, the savvy reader at that very moment is going to be thinking so. So it's helpful to orient them like:> Here's a wild sentence. Here's why it's not actually that wild: reasonsWithout the connecting phrase, the reader has to figure out from context that out of all the possible things the following text could be doing, what it's actually doing is explaining the previous claim.You can rightly counterpoint that it's not strictly necessary, that a savvy reader can figure it out. But I think the moment right after a wild statement is a hotspot for readers getting ready to jettison, and having a little assurance is likely very helpful.
tomcatfish: It turns out that both phrases are used like this, similarly to how they teach in logic classes that "but" is just "and" in fancy clothing, but actual usage is quite different. Actually, a lot of language is just signpost phrasing that "helps the medicine go down" by giving hints at how the following idea will connect to this one.---Both phrases are used like this— let me explain:Logic classes teach that "but" is just "and" in fancy clothing, and actual usage is quite different. A lot of language is signpost phrasing that "helps the medicine go down" by giving hints at how the following idea will connect to this one.
imgabe: This should be called “The Engineer’s Credo”
OJFord: So, in 2026 I feel like this is no longer anywhere near the top of my list of annoying, completely redundant speech things.
medi8r: I have a duvet. It turns out.
jackmott42: oh, paul grahams eassays!Speaking of, how are his efforts to help this administration cut down no woke youth?Does he still think racism isn't as bad a "the left" thinks, after Elon's Nazi salute and the thousands of ICE agents brutalized immigrants, murdered citizens, while cheered on by half the country, then invaded Iran because the Christian right thinks its a holy war against Muslims?
getnormality: There is much less to this essay than meets the eye. It boils down to this:1. The author thinks "it turns out" should only be used to express discovery of objectively surprising facts.2. Paul Graham sometimes uses "it turns out" to express discovery of subjectively surprising facts.3. The author finds the difference between his opinion and Paul Graham's opinion objectionable.It turns out that people use stock phrases in different ways!
dap: I don’t think that sums up the post well. I would say:The phrase “it turns out” has a surprising way of disarming skepticism in readers. While surprising, it’s easy to understand: the phrase suggests a story of the author’s journey of believing one thing, investigating, and finding something different. That’s more credible than simply saying the thing they now believe. The touch of vulnerability (admitting being wrong) avoids the reader’s ego getting defensive when asked to admit they were wrong. The net result is that it’s surprisingly easy to be convinced without any real argument.I’ve noticed this as well (often in podcasts and programs like Radiolab) and I think it’s quite valuable to just be aware of it as a reader/listener, if you care about thinking critically about your own beliefs.
getnormality: Yes, the post is built on the assumption that it makes sense to review a personal essay of subjective experiences as if it is an obscured mechanism for convincing people about factual claims.
bitdestroyer: bock bock
nine_k: It turns out, assesses the epistemic landscape, and turns back in.
xnorswap: ( 2010 )Original submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162965And with a response from pg.
dang: Thanks! Macroexpanded:“It Turns Out” (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25556578 - Dec 2020 (29 comments)Paul Graham and "It turns out" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1633802 - Aug 2010 (15 comments)“It turns out” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162965 - March 2010 (63 comments, with pg's response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163194)
chkaloon: Massimo Pigliucci's favorite phrase. Used to drive me insane listening to Rationally Speaking
lelanthran: > the one which bugs me once it was pointed out (even though I use it myself) is "to be honest...", which could carry the implication anything said without that qualifier may be dishonest.If you change it to "To Be Perfectly Honest...", then it doesn't imply that everything else was dishonest, merely elided.
xnorswap: It is mildly interesting that the top comment on all entries is the same callback to Douglas Adams, but in a natural way, and seems to be some kind of collective trigger.
tpoacher: Argument:> It turns out it's X!Counterargument:> Ah, but here's the thing! Actually, it turns out it isn't X!Everything is well with the world again.Better yet. Make a cartoon / infographic / meme of someone 'superior' explaining to someone 'inferior' that X is true. Extra points if the 'inferior' person does something unrelatedly obnoxious or stupid in the panel. Seems to me this is the strongest form of argument used for anything these days.The only way to counter that form of argument is to make your own cartoon / infographic / meme. Nothing else even gets close (it turns out).
jb1991: Passive voice refers to a particular grammatical construct that is unrelated to this.
jrm4: Wrong. Stop nerding so hard. It's related in terms of how it functions as human beings use it.
