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Grant writes:

I just read the entry on your blog about the quality of writing on the
web. I know squat about good writing, and I do not and have never
aspired to be a writer. But Mark Pilgrim’s words, and yours, made me
instantly think of an article in the Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology called “Unskilled and
Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence
Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.

It’s almost one of those psych studies that ends up sounding like common
sense, because in a nutshell, the authors are saying: if you are bad at
[writing], you will think you are better at it than you actually are.
They tease out a bit more detail, though. In some domains, a person’s
skill level is directly tied to how well that person evaluates the skill
of others in that domain. The authors give many examples, including
grammar, spelling, and chess. Good writing in general probably falls in
that category, too.

So, yeah, a web full of people reading and writing for each other. Not
being good writers, they lack the “metacognitive ability” to evaluate
each other and themselves. If they cannot self-evaluate, how can they
hope to improve? It’s not surprising (to those of us with 20-20
hindsight) that most of them do not become better writers.

So what is the magic secret ingredient X? I think Mark hit on it when
he said: “the mind-boggling lack of self-knowledge required to write
every day and not realize that you write badly.” X is LEARN WHAT GOOD
WRITING IS. I realize that’s as helpful as saying LEARN HOW TO PLAY
CHESS BETTER, but I guess I’m saying there is no magic secret. It’s
just the age-old process of learning. Take a class, study the masters,
learn to evaluate others and yourself. LEARN HOW TO LEARN.

I think a lot of the responses Mark quotes are saying basically the same
thing about self-evaluation. And your take is very similar, too, which
is probably why it made me instantly think of that article. But I have,
you know, science on my side, so I win.

Much, er, better written than my
attempt earlier. I think Grant is getting at the root cause of what
I only crudely grasped with my “we only read crappy writing” thesis;
viz., “by only reading crappy writing, we don’t recognize good
writing when we see it—or fail to see it—in our own
output.”