PS re examples, I agree they are helpful in general (and I liked your post on the topic). Looking back at my notes I see I had a few more, but didn’t use them because they didn’t make crystal-clear points (and I was concerned the post was getting too long/complicated already). Actually in retrospect I realize I could have just made up examples if I couldn’t produce actual ones. Anyways.
Looking back at my notes I see I had a few more, but didn’t use them because they didn’t make crystal-clear points (and I was concerned the post was getting too long/complicated already).
Personally, I’m a fan of kinda anti-conciseness. I used to think of conciseness as a big thing to aim for, but iirc, there was some Slate Star Codex post that convinced me otherwise (possibly Non-Expert Explanation, but I don’t think so). A lot of things require you to look at it from various angles and see different examples of it before it really clicks.
There is a tradeoff of course though. Even if there’s a benefit of being more clear, for more tangential points perhaps that benefit wouldn’t be worth it. But for the more central points, I think the benefit usually is worth it, and that it would be worth it in the case of this article, IMHO.
The argument for conciseness these days would be that people are more likely to read it. Medium published stats a few years ago from which I inferred the optimum article length is v roughly 1200 words, if the aim is to maximise total words read (readers x mean words read).
Also analysing my own Medium articles suggests people typically stop reading after about 4 minutes regardless of the article’s length.
But I take your point re examples—they improve clarity disproportionately.
PS re examples, I agree they are helpful in general (and I liked your post on the topic). Looking back at my notes I see I had a few more, but didn’t use them because they didn’t make crystal-clear points (and I was concerned the post was getting too long/complicated already). Actually in retrospect I realize I could have just made up examples if I couldn’t produce actual ones. Anyways.
Personally, I’m a fan of kinda anti-conciseness. I used to think of conciseness as a big thing to aim for, but iirc, there was some Slate Star Codex post that convinced me otherwise (possibly Non-Expert Explanation, but I don’t think so). A lot of things require you to look at it from various angles and see different examples of it before it really clicks.
There is a tradeoff of course though. Even if there’s a benefit of being more clear, for more tangential points perhaps that benefit wouldn’t be worth it. But for the more central points, I think the benefit usually is worth it, and that it would be worth it in the case of this article, IMHO.
The argument for conciseness these days would be that people are more likely to read it. Medium published stats a few years ago from which I inferred the optimum article length is v roughly 1200 words, if the aim is to maximise total words read (readers x mean words read).
Also analysing my own Medium articles suggests people typically stop reading after about 4 minutes regardless of the article’s length.
But I take your point re examples—they improve clarity disproportionately.