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Comment by c3534l | Hacker News Reader

Apart from this being very elementary instructions, I think the bigger story is that the CIA is abusing its power to classify information so extensively that simple writing advice was classified for 55 years.

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Haha, I think you are missing the much more obvious explanation. In any organization dealing with classified information, there is a very well known management trick: if you want your employees to read a document, make it classified and give them clearance to read it. People will be much more interested in it.

That case sounds like a textbook example of a document where you want to use that trick.

>obvious >trick

It's not as contradictory as it sounds. Many such practices are fairly well know to general audiences from causal reading of articles just like this, but the practices often aren't identified as such by those who are subjected to it, or if it is identified, the practice works regardless. Take for example here on HN the large number of people who dismiss many of the practices of social media likes but get upset when their post is downvoted.

Such practices have a major effect on people regardless of how aware they are of what's actually going on.

"In order to popularize potatoes in France, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier placed armed guards around his potato fields, instructing the guards to accept all bribes and allow people to "steal" the crop."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine-Augustin_Parmentier

Advertisement is an obvious trick that works.

While I agree with the idea that the CIA abuses power, techniques that enable effective communication are a HUGE advantage. Knowing how to write in a way that other people can actually understand (and take action on) is absolutely advantageous (as is any other technology that reduces miscommunication). Of course at this point in time you can take a course like Little Red Schoolhouse and come away with many, many practical actions you can take to improve the clarity of your written communication, so probably in effect is has already been declassified.

I can't wait to see the CIA guide to shitposting once it's declassified.

It just says: "Look at the top post, disagree with one point, bring up a distracting point"

> MEMETICS—A GROWTH INDUSTRY IN US MILITARY OPERATIONS

- United States Marine Corps, School of Advanced Warfighting

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a507172.pdf

I submitted that a few months ago! In general people don't realize the extent that information warfare is taken seriously in some circles.

I know Little Red Schoolhouse as the informal name for a particular writing class at the University of Chicago. Is it more general than that?

There are similar courses at other universities, but I don't know them by name, the general idea being that the courses are based on the data and theories that have come out of linguistics over the past 60 years.

It's easier to classify than de-classify. It's also easier to get dinged for under-classifying than for over-classifying.

Styleometry is a thing. You can somewhat identify an author by analysis of word choice, grammar (or lack thereof) and other features. With computers this can be done surprisingly accurately.

So yes there is a very good reason to keep the CIA writing advice classified. Even though it seems banal.

Are there ways to de-Styleometrize writing?

Follow a guidebook/protocol religiously

There is adversarial stylometry software like JStylo-Anonymouth.

I destylometrize online sometimes: Use USA spelling, verbize nouns, use words like faucet and miss out Oxford commas.

Translate to a non-Latinate language and back.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Consider what else you can learn about the CIA from the discussion. They could have released a redacted document but it would only have any information that was already publicly available. There's no value in that.

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