I've noticed a trend among the rationalist movement of favoring long and convoluted articles referencing other long and convoluted articles--the more inaccessible to the general public, the better.
I don't want to contend that there's anything inherently wrong with such articles, I contend precisely the opposite: there's nothing inherently wrong with short and direct articles.
One example of significant simplicity is Einstein's famous E=mc2 paper (Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content?), which is merely three pages long.
Can anyone contend that Einstein's paper is either not significant or not straightforward?
It is also generally understood among writers that it's difficult to explain complex concepts in a simple way. And programmers do favor simpler code, and often transform complex code into simpler versions that achieve the same functionality in a process called code refactoring. Guess what... refactoring takes substantial effort.
The art of compressing complex ideas into succinct phrases is valued by the general population, and proof of that are quotes and memes.
“One should use common words to say uncommon things” ― Arthur Schopenhauer
There is power in simplicity.
One example of simple ideas with extreme potential is Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability: don't try to prove your beliefs, try to disprove them. That simple principle solves important problems in epistemology, such as the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation. And you don't need to understand all the philosophy behind this notion, only that many white swans don't prove the proposition that all swans are white, but a single black swan does disprove it. So it's more profitable to look for black swans.
And we can use simple concepts to defend the power of simplicity.
We can use falsifiability to explain that many simple ideas being unconsequential doesn't prove the claim that all simple ideas are inconsequential, but a single consequential idea that is simple does disprove it.
Therefore I've proved that simple notions can be important.
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I think pretty much everyone agrees that short + concise language is better, but it also takes quite a lot more talent to write that way. My read of the whole rationalist "wall of text" habit is that we are simply writing about extremely complicated things without commensurate talent. There are certainly a few people with both great writing skills and great technical skills, but if you want just the former, there are millions of books to read, and if you want just the latter then rationalist groups seem like an OK place to find it.
It depends. Moldbug is the opposite of concise yet is still talented.
I mean, I don't see how that contradicts what I said. You can be talented and put your efforts into other good qualities (such as prose, persuasiveness, or sensationalism) or just have a different kind of talent than the kind that's necessary to write concisely.
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Agreed. But I think this tendency leads to a fallacious bias
wall-of-text ⇒ interesting,¬wall-of-text ⇒ ¬interesting.Have you see a simple article upvoted by mottizens?
I like walls of text so long as the information density is good. A short post, even with high information density, usually still doesn't have the time to explore its ideas fully. I've seen some simple articles upvoted by mottizens, yeah, but the long effortposts will always get more upvotes because they are genuinely better. This is because those who can write concisely often pack more thoughts into their posts rather than shortening them.
You are making a fallacy here. You are saying that
B (100 * 0.1)is not necessarily better thanA (1000 * 0.025)because even if the information density is higher inB, the total ideas are not as many asA.But you are assuming that
C (500 * 0.05)doesn't exist.You are also assuming an article needs a lot of information. But why? What's wrong with an article exploring a single idea, but an idea that is very important?
You also don't seem to understand what simplifying means. It doesn't mean compacting information, it means getting rid of unnecessary information.
For example recently I was discussing that a person claiming it's not profitable for them to lose $100k for an episode lost, while at the same time claiming the contract could be negotiated from $50m to $65m. The ratio is 150 mores of what they claim they "couldn't afford". I initially used an example of a $10 contract, but then I realized I can use percentages. They claim they cannot afford to lose 0.2%, but they can increase the contract 30%.
Using percentages the idea I wanted to convey it's still there, but a ton of unnecessary information is now gone.
Using bigger information chunks (one percentage instead of two numbers) the idea is easier to transmit. However, the information density is reduced, but not because it's "compacted".
Are they?
Will a long post always be better than a shorter post?
Nah, this isn't what I was talking about at all. 100 * 0.1 and 1000 * 0.025 both sound pretty bad to me. What I'm saying is that if you can write with an information density of 0.1 (which I assume is fairly high) then I'd prefer you keep writing until your post is at least bite-sized if not meal-sized.
There are diminishing returns to information condensation as well as to post length. Maybe a 1000-word post is 1.5x as interesting as a 500-word post, all else being equal. And a post with 10 information density is triple as hard as a post with 5 information density to write. Not to get too autistic here, but I think we can roughly model a given post's quality as
Q = density^1.2 * length
and the effort it takes to write it as
E = density ^ 3 + length ^ 1.5
So after a certain point you should stop optimizing for density and start lengthening your post instead, provided there are still things to say. There's a reason novels are so much more popular than poetry, despite the latter arguably having far greater information density.
If we follow this, then a 500-word post with a density of 10 is better than a 1000-word post with a density of 5. Even a post with 100 words and a density of 40 is better.
Of course you would prefer a 1000-word post with high density over a 100-word post with high density, but you as a reader don't get to choose. People write what they write.
What I'm saying is that if you see a post with 100 words, it shouldn't be discriminated in favor of posts with 1000 words, because clearly it's possible for the short one to be better.
This makes no sense. The effort should be proportional to both density and length, 500 words more at density 40 takes more effort than at density 5.
Moreover, if you start from this end, then you are going to be clearly biased, because you are going to assume that it's unlikely somebody spent 8 times the energy to achieve 4 times the density of a short post. You are just going to presuppose it's low quality from the start.
Arguing about the exact mathematics of the off-the-cuff equation is an enormous waste of time. Point is there are diminishing returns to density relative to effort after a certain point.
You're right, I should have multiplied.
OK, and? It's not like bias matters much here, so long as I still give a short post a chance. What are we even arguing about at this point? Do you substantively disagree that density has diminishing returns?
That's the only time when bias matters.
You are pretty much saying the bias of a jury doesn't matter as long as they give the defendant a chance. But it's a biased chance! Their verdict is likely to be wrong. If you are biased it's likely better to not judge at all.
Yes. It's completely up to the writer how much effort to put into an article, and a short article shouldn't be assumed to be low effort.
You tried to bring up math, not me, you can't say this is the math of how I think, and then say, "OK, that's completely wrong, but my point still stands".
If we follow your math, then you think it takes 16 times more energy for me to write a great 100-word text, than it takes to write an average 1000-word text. I don't think that's how it works.
The math doesn't work. According to your math it takes 32 times more effort to write a 1000-word text than a 100-word text at the same density:
(1000/100)^1.5. That's obviously not true, I think it's linearly proportional, so it's justx^1.Then, according to you, something with a density of 40 takes 512 times more effort to write than something with a density of 5:
(40/5)^3. Again, I don't think that's true. Once again I think it's linearly proportional.So the right equation is
e = density * length. In that case instead of taking 16 times, it takes 0.8 times:(40 * 100) / (5 * 1000). So it takes more effort to write the long average article. Then of course we would need to adjust the equation for quality as well.The math is so completely off that your point does not stand. You should not assume assume a short article is necessarily bad quality just because it would have taken a "prohibitively" large amount of effort to be of good quality.
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"I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one." ― Mark Twain
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