Comment by mjfisher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjfisher | Hacker News Reader

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If you assume a starting point that writing is to communicate clearly (as in delivering a thesis or argument) and your writing does not do that, then it's bad writing.

You might not want to assume that. There are other reasons to write ambiguously with excessive and unnecessary ornamentation:

* Everyone else in your field does it, and you want to write in a familiar style

* You hope people confuse the advanced vocabulary in your writing with an advanced argument and it will bolster your credibility

* Pretension: you want to feel clever whilst writing it, or appeal to those who will feel clever whilst reading it

All of those are perfectly valid to my mind - even writing verbosely for the sheer love of the language is fine.

I just don't think this article does any of that well.

Oh, it does pretension very well, as it should given the market in which and to whom it's published. The Hedgehog Review appeals to aspirant biens-pensants of a notionally resurgent school of cultural conservatism notionally in the mold of Mencken and Buckley. Which is a sad joke, of course; say what you would of either man, both knew the value of firm principle, and of concision in honing the sharp side of a tongue. But however footless the pretense, it should be pretty well gratified by an article that takes the parable of the blind men and the elephant and dresses it up in five thousand or so mostly unnecessary additional words. (The effort at history is at least justifiable, if little more usefully pursued.)

What galls me is really just the lack of critical engagement. Whining about an article being "too long" is the tantrum of a Tiktok-addled child. Complaints that add up only to "this isn't meant for me" are well suited to the self-centeredness of a teenager. The questions of who this is for, then, and why, and what that might say about something else, are actually interesting, and around here somewhat tiresomely rare in the asking.

You seem to have a remarkably uncharitable view of your discussion partner.

It worries me that people are comfortable in declaring themselves unwilling or unable to read critically, or to reckon with a thought of any complexity. I realize that's not what they understand themselves to be doing, but it is what they're doing nonetheless.

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