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 -
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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