This has some really insightful content. I agree with the sentiment that good communication is on you, the reader and future writer. On me as a writer.
But it’s missing a huge factor. You’re assuming that someone will read your prose. That is not a given. In fact, whether someone reads at all, and if they do, with a hostile or friendly mindset, are the most important things.
Bookmarking for reference. We need to write better. How to do that is not si.ple, but it is worthy of thought and discussion.
The “It’s on me/you” part kinda reminds me of a quote I think of, from a SlateStarCodex post:
This obviously doesn’t absolve the Nazis of any blame, but it sure doesn’t make the rest of the world look very good either.
I was trying to make sense of it, and came up with an interpretation like “The situation doesn’t remove blame from Nazis. It simply creates more blame for other people, in addition to the blame for the Nazis.”
Likewise, my post doesn’t try to absolve the reader of burden-of-understanding. It just creates (well, points-out) more burden-of-being-understandable, for the writer.
You can increase the chances of something being read by keeping it short. There’s about no chance that random, moderately interested people are going to read the complete sequences. So there is a need for distillation into concise but complete arguments. Still, after all this time.
Exactly. What I was thinking of but not expressing clearly is that the strategy this post focused on, writing more to be clearer, is not a good strategy for many purposes.
This has some really insightful content. I agree with the sentiment that good communication is on you, the reader and future writer. On me as a writer.
But it’s missing a huge factor. You’re assuming that someone will read your prose. That is not a given. In fact, whether someone reads at all, and if they do, with a hostile or friendly mindset, are the most important things.
Bookmarking for reference. We need to write better. How to do that is not si.ple, but it is worthy of thought and discussion.
Thanks!
The “It’s on me/you” part kinda reminds me of a quote I think of, from a SlateStarCodex post:
I was trying to make sense of it, and came up with an interpretation like “The situation doesn’t remove blame from Nazis. It simply creates more blame for other people, in addition to the blame for the Nazis.”
Likewise, my post doesn’t try to absolve the reader of burden-of-understanding. It just creates (well, points-out) more burden-of-being-understandable, for the writer.
You can increase the chances of something being read by keeping it short. There’s about no chance that random, moderately interested people are going to read the complete sequences. So there is a need for distillation into concise but complete arguments. Still, after all this time.
Exactly. What I was thinking of but not expressing clearly is that the strategy this post focused on, writing more to be clearer, is not a good strategy for many purposes.