>the whitepaper is intentionally indecipherable
I decided to see whether this statement is justified.
Before starting
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I am about to read the whitepaper now, but before I do, I want to set up some standards for how I will judge that it is "intentionally indecipherable". First, I want to think of examples of intentionally indecipherable language.
I have these examples in mind:
1. We have many examples from marketing. If marketing just doesn't want to answer a question but does want to write a response to something.
2. There are examples of nonsense. I have in mind this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator This reads:
>The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated aluminite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented
This is intentionally indecipherable, yet seems quite serious. It's a good example to bear before us.
3. There are times that important technical facts are deeply obfuscated. While I don't have a specific example, I think if you think of white papers on deeply unpopular features, you will get a sense of what I mean.
4. Because you add the word "intentionally" we don't need to include crank science in this judgment. That relieves us of a HUGE burden, as we will be evaluating a white paper possibly outside of our experience, and it is very difficult to tell the difference between crank and real science, totally outside of our domain.
Okay, so the above are the standards I have in mind. How will I evaluate whether the white paper is "intentionally indecipherable"?
"Intentionally indecipherable" criteria, selected before reading paper
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1. Does it use words that simply do not exist? For example, having zero Google results, and not being decipherable from their stems and construction of the word. Does the author offer definitions in these cases?
2. Does the author appear helpful at any point? For example, are there simplifications, or "other ways" to think about something offered? Do tricky points appear to receive careful attention?
3. Are there any clear jokes? Intentionally indecipherable writing does not contain clear jokes, because the author is "on edge", using all of their mental capacity to keep from accidentally communicating anything.
4. (a big one): Are multiple synonyms used for no reason? The intention of the indecipherable author is to keep from passing on any knowledge. If the author can use 4-5 syonnyms, that greatly reduces the chance that the reader accidentally looks up the word in question. On the other hand, landmark papers use the same terminology consistently, rather than reaching for synonyms: the author wants to convey something about concepts, and goes to great lengths to talk about it. Papers that are decipherable have high repetition of key words. Papers that are indecipherable have very low repetition (to keep from communicating.)
5. Are there vague references which are avoided being mentioned directly? This is common in marketing spin, but also in case of wanting to keep from communicating something. If something is included by reference without taking a parenthetical two words to explain what will be included there, this is another good indication of intentional indecipherability.
Okay, now I've set up the standards. Let me dive in and read the white paper!
Reading the paper
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I am using this link:
https://iota.readme.io/v1.2.0/docs/whitepaper
Oh, I forgot to add but clicking that link reminded me: if it seems that sentences are made more tricky by editing after the fact, i.e. if they are not a natural way to form a sentence but seem specially edited for greater complexity, that seems a good indication. (This will be criteria 6.)
The whitepaper is linked with the words:
> The IOTA Whitepaper which describes the main technology behind IOTA - the Tangle - is available to read online. It goes into greater detail about the structure as well as the security of the Tangle.
This seems extremely focused on imparting real information. It is written in an extremely accessible, simplified style (failing indecipherability criteria 1 & 2). It does not seem unnecessarily complicated (failing indecipherability criterion 6). It actively mentions something rather than alluding to it, by mentioning "the Tangle" within dashes -- failing indecipherability criterion 5. It seems to fail criterion 4 as "the Tangle" is already mentioned twice. This sentence is written in an extremely simplified style, containing no jargon at all. It does not seem to contain any joke or lightheartedness, though it is only two sentences.
On to the paper! I clicked "http://iotatoken.com/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf" to read the paper.
I did not need to read more than 2 pages to arrive at a judgment. My judgment based on the criteria selected beforehand, is that it is absolutely clear that the whitepaper is not intentionally indecipherable.
The author goes to extreme lengths to impart knowledge. The entirety of the Introduction goes to very carefully convey real knowledge. The author repeats himself again and again:
>The genesis transaction sent these tokens to several other “founder” addresses. Let us stress that all of the tokens were created in the genesis transaction. No tokens will be created in the future, and there will be no mining in the sense that miners receive monetary rewards “out of thin air”.
There is a measure of humor, such as the naming of the word "an iota". But the discussion is extremely serious, the author is extremely earnest. Not only does the author not use any made-up words, but goes to extreme lengths to enable the reader to read them.
See footnote 26, for example:
>This is a consequence of the so-called Large Deviation Principle. See the general book [13], and Proposition 5.2 in Section 8.5 of [14] for a simple and instructive derivation of the upper bound, and Section 1.9 of [5] for the (not so simple) derivation of the lower bound.
It is heart-breaking that the author goes to such incredible lengths to attempt to convey knowledge, they are doing everything physically possible, only to have someone who does not understand them fail to apply the principle of charity and claim that it was "intentionally indecipherable."
Concusions
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My conclusions, with the above methodology.
1. We set out to judge whether your statement was justified when you stated the paper is "intentionnally indecipherable." It is absolutely not a justified claim. We thought carefully about judgment criteria before we ever opened the paper. The paper failed every crtiterion for "intentional indecipherability" that we could think of.
2. More to the point, I feel you should have started by applying the principle of charity. Rather than saying "I could not follow the paper" or "I found logical inconsistencies", you made the claim that it is intentionally indecipherable. This goes too far. It's, in fact, heartbreaking, when it is clear that the author put so much time and effort into making the presented work accessible. This included finding footnotes to instructional concepts that the author felt there was any chance would not be understood.
We can go farther. This claim that a lovingly crafted paper that was read, reread, and reread, with an acknowledgment section reading:
>The author thanks Bartosz Kusmierz, Cyril Gr¨unspan and Toru Kazama who pointed out several errors in earlier drafts, and James Brogan for his contributions towards making this paper more readable.
would be "intentionally indecipherable" shuts down science and progress.
On a personal level, it makes me question whether I would ever publish anything under my own name and for a wide audience, when no matter how much effort is put into it, even the best communities on the planet will have someone come forward and say that my careful work is "intentionally indecipherable."
So we have completely rejected your statement. It fails every criteria that I carefully set up to evaluate it. You should not make such statements in the future, about anything.
(Please note that when I started this comment, I was prepared to write the opposite opinion, and agree with you.)
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[EDIT]
- I lightly added the above
- In addition, just to be clear I have absolutely no relationship with the project or white paper. I haven't evaluated it besides deciding whether it is intentionally indecipherable.