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Comment by Lambent_Cactus | Hacker News Reader

Most of his articles could be about a third as long with no loss in clarity. The meandering windups can be _rhetorically_ effective, especially when they appeal to the biases of the reader, as they appeal to mine. But they're not truth-directed, and often obscure weak or blindered reasoinng, as I think they do here.

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Isn't this a bit cliche? "It's too long" without engagement with the argument or even with how exactly it is too long? I've just seen this a few too many times in regards to Scott and would like to see someone actually substantiate it.

If you can make the same points with 1/10th as many words, the original was too long. The guy writes extremely well, but could use some practice at editing for brevity. A wikipedia link like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance gets partway there.

Distilling it to 10% would get the facts across, but the long build-up of argument makes it much more convincing. Rhetoric is different from, say, technical writing: it optimises not (just) for efficiency but for effectiveness.

Do you believe that the SSC post is primarily about pluralistic ignorance? Do you find that even the first few paragraphs of the post are at all consistent with this belief?

Maybe SSC is long because it's putting forth complex ideas. Ideas that some readers don't want to take the time to understand.

For those who want a few sentences they can chuck into one of the pre-existing boxes they formed at school, I agree SSC isn't very convenient for that.

Pluralistic ignorance is one of the ideas that comes up in the article, though not with that label. As such, it is a helpful starting point and it is easy to understand.

I thought the article made interesting points, but could have done so far more succinctly. By comparison, when I read Richard Stallman's stuff, I don't always agree with it, but I'm usually impressed by how concisely he is able to say things. SSC is too often the opposite.

To be honest, I don't find the term or the wiki article that illuminating. Scott's way of doing things from scratch, in his own words, feels more worth my time. And IMO he is doing something way more interesting in that article than just rehashing a concept we happen to have a name for.

Subjective feelings aside, it would be more interesting to give an example of an author who addresses the topics Scott addresses at a similar level of insight and manages to do so more concisely. I don't think Stallman is much of an example of that.

Good writing is not some universal fungible. It really does depend on what you're trying to say. And there are basically no other writers I can think of who are trying to model a way of thinking like Scott.

I guess it depends on the audience. As a kid who grew up watching Star Trek, I already knew that humans are illogical. And having been around through the Trump presidency among other things, I know they go berserk over some seemingly innocuous topics, and that you have to be careful to not trigger people. So I didn't need to read 20 pages to absorb those lessons.

An analogy: we're mostly experienced programmers here, so we can usually understand a quick description of a programming concept even if it's new to us. A programming book for beginners might have to spend much longer getting the same idea across. Perhaps "Scott's way of doing things from scratch" is like that. But once you've read a few of those essays, you're no longer a beginner, so you'd rather have the quick version.

That isn't really the point. The essay is about how anti-human it is to force truly independent thinkers into a box where they're allowed to freely make technical contributions but have to steer clear of sociocultural landmines. Although some very adept scientists, like Kolmogorov, have managed in situations like this.

More than once I've gotten the impression that people who criticize Scott for verbosity assume he's blah blah blahing about stuff they already understand, when in reality he's thinking a couple levels deeper than they're accustomed to from a blog.

"The essay is about how anti-human it is to force truly independent thinkers into a box where they're allowed to freely make technical contributions but have to steer clear of sociocultural landmines."

Ok, that is a reasonable distillation. And you just said it in one sentence. Why does it take Scott 20 pages?

Because he's not just making that claim, he's immersing you in why he thinks it's true. By walking you through that world like it's a movie, and pointing out all the inescapable cultural corrosion that follows from letting the world be that way.

Scott knows that people will blithely accept his thesis as obvious... until the moment it matters most, when there is social pressure to accept something untrue. He wants you to feel the price you'll pay if you cave.

Shrug, dystopian novels like 1984 serve that purpose and do a better job imho. I can't speak for other readers but I don't think I got anything from that particular article that I wouldn't have gotten from a version condensed to a few bullet points. There are other SSC/AC10 articles that I liked more, so I do keep reading it sometimes.

The SSC post is MUCH better written than that Wikipedia article.

I don’t read Scott just to consume new information or ideas, I read his blogs because they’re legitimately a joy to read. You’re right, you could trim a _lot_ of fat from these posts, but at the end of the day if his readers enjoy his prose, I don’t think he has much reason to change.

You're underestimating the value of a good lead-up, and the principle of "pace and lead".

Most people are not interested in reading a Wiki article on an abstract topic, and want to be taken along for the ride - including why it's worth reading the article.

He is an excellent writer for getting hundreds of thousands of people to want to know about Kolmogorov complicity in a useful way.

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