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Academic writing is fucking terrible. It's like they are trying to be as dry and boring as possible on purpose to signal how serious and high-status they are. Compare the writing in your average prestigious journal paper to a good popular science book like The Selfish Gene or Pale Blue Dot.
Moldbug's writing is terrible in a different way; overtly obscurantist and meandering. It's intentional, but I don't like it. The Dreaded Jim describes it thus:
It's not about length; I can read long texts, if written well. I don't balk at reading a 10k-word blog post by Scott Alexander.
Jim is merely performatively a villain, playing a character (real or not) devoid of any empathy or humanity, an outrage machine, a shit poster extraordinaire, an asshole with a few truths. Moldbug writes in the fuller sense of the term, there’s more of him in his work, he engages with critics, he has empathy in a way Jim’s selfish character never could.
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It is an acquired taste, I guess, or most people skim rather than read his posts. Judging by his huge huge subscriber count and fame, evidently, this style worked for him.
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