I tried the Shannon/Turing/Einstein writing style exercise in the Distillation for Alignment Practicum and didn’t find it very useful. The Einstein paper I read seemed reasonably good at communicating its ideas, but I didn’t find many useful techniques besides obvious things like “describe one idea per paragraph” and “define the symbols in your equations.”
Another idea I’m thinking is that scientific papers are fundamentally worse for communicating ideas than other mediums like textbooks, videos, or more casual writing.
I tried the Shannon/Turing/Einstein writing style exercise in the Distillation for Alignment Practicum and didn’t find it very useful. The Einstein paper I read seemed reasonably good at communicating its ideas, but I didn’t find many useful techniques besides obvious things like “describe one idea per paragraph” and “define the symbols in your equations.”
I bet there are some better papers for learning communication techniques? Maybe from What is the best scientific paper you have read? or Any fun, easy to read scientific papers you’d suggest? or Lists of important publications in science. (The first link has a lot of Shannon/Turing/Einstein fans, so maybe I’m crazy.)
Another idea I’m thinking is that scientific papers are fundamentally worse for communicating ideas than other mediums like textbooks, videos, or more casual writing.