Hundred Pages vs. 11 Words

https://praveshkoirala.com/2024/02/18/intelligence-moves-via-abstractions/

by pkoird • 2 years ago

9 5 2 years ago

riwsky2• 2 years ago

This prose desperately needs an editor and a rewrite pass, which would be unremarkable in technical fare—but in an argument about the information density of prose, it severely undermines the author’s trustworthiness.

riwsky2• 2 years ago

To illustrate:

“The answer is not immediately obvious. Indeed, word problems in these forms are not only long-winded but also prone to misinterpretation. I may have wanted to ask you something but you may have understood (and answered) something else entirely. Moreover, I may have misspecified what I originally wanted to ask. All in all, this seems like a rather unfortunate way of asking questions of such nature. What if I change it to something like this instead:”

Could shrink to:

“The answer is not obvious. Wordy descriptions of math problems are prone to miscommunication—and tediousness. Compare:”

pkoird• 2 years ago

Guilty as charged. I'm definitely aware of my tendency to repeat things. In my admittedly flimsy defense, it stems from my fear of being misinterpreted.

itchyouch• 2 years ago

Steven pinker has a TED talk about the ambiguity of language. And he makes a compelling point that the ambiguity in language is actually a feature, rather than a bug.

The reason being that the ambiguity allows for the renegotiation of relationships.

Hundred Pages vs. 11 Words

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