Don't we? What about the music that plays in the elevator, or while you're on hold on the phone?
Similarly for writing, I would imagine you read plenty of emails that are of more-or-less median writing quality. And yet, these emails may discuss pivotal decisions, where it is very important whether their arguments are logically correct.
Get a median human to write some elevator or hold music and see how that goes. There's an entire business of making and licensing such music which would not be the case if any rando could just crank it out.
Emails, etc, are just 'communication but over text' - it's 'writing' in the very basic sense but it's not the sort of writing people concerned with style and quality care about, either as consumers or producers. Me talking to the cashier at the store is not 'public speaking', neither I nor the cashier care it's not the Gettysburgh Address.
I think emails summarizing meetings, or making a case for something, or describing something, match the kind of writing PG means in his essay.
And like the commenter you're replying to, I think that LLMs today can write far better than your average coworker (assuming they don't go on a hallucinated tangent; then again some coworkers also do!).
So it's fair to compare LLMs and work emails.
Not to speak of work wiki pages (Confluence etc) describing technical things, decisions, policies, etc.
Why do you think pg is writing about emails and meeting notes? I don't readily see anything in the piece to suggest that. 'making a case for something' or 'describing something' covers the bulk of writing, the piece is quite explicit about not being about all writing.
It seems to me there is no difference in kind between an email arguing for or examining an important decision or idea, and an "essay" on an important decision or idea.
I definitely don't think these documents are just "written speech". Some emails are—a quick message asking if you'll be in the office tomorrow, for example—but major ones require significantly more thought.
It seems to me there is no difference in kind between an email arguing for or examining an important decision or idea, and an "essay" on an important decision or idea.
Why are there people who make a living as, say, newspaper opinion columnists or magazine staff writers? Or hell, why aren't we all rich substackers given that writing a substack is literally email?
Don't we? What about the music that plays in the elevator, or while you're on hold on the phone?
Similarly for writing, I would imagine you read plenty of emails that are of more-or-less median writing quality. And yet, these emails may discuss pivotal decisions, where it is very important whether their arguments are logically correct.