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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Notes -
Einstein's paper is short because a longer paper is not needed. Something more complicated like General Relativity , QFT, or String Theory needs much greater exposition.
As Einstein also said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
Some posts come off as long-winded because of needing a lot of examples to explain a concept, or overquoting. I think instead of quoting from an entre page of a book, just link to it.
Unfortunately most links are clicked by a very small proportion of readers (e.g. I made a reddit post showing off this github page. The post got free 120 upvotes iirc I got 20 views on the github page).
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Yes, but I'm not complaining about long articles. If an idea requires a long explanation, so be it.
I'm talking about short articles. The assumption around here seems to be that if an article is short, it must be because the ideas are not novel and/or trivial.
But that's not true. Einstein's idea that
E=mc2is novel, consequential, and simple.I think longwinded posts do well because people perceive that a lot of effort went into it. But this does not mean short posts are automatically dismissed.
Yes, but as others have accepted in this thread: short articles can take more effort than a long one. Writing concisely and succinctly takes more effort than just typing whatever comes to mind.
Doesn't it? Do you have an example of a short article that did well?
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