Language
Tools for thought
Language
Reaching wide audiences requires all-terrain language, and the urgency of the present moment, amplified by chronological feeds, doesn’t allow for much stylistic variety. Efficiency is key — compressing as much information as possible to the least amount of words is the ideal of all communication.
While I do agree that many areas of interaction, like... See more
While I do agree that many areas of interaction, like... See more
for an idea to shape society it must be communicated. There are many technical challenges to communicating ideas, and one of the more important ones is applying a gears-level understanding of how people evaluate ideas.
Samo Burja • Intellectual Legitimacy | Samo Burja
Simple writing also lasts better. People reading your stuff in the future will be in much the same position as people from other countries reading it today. The culture and the language will have changed. It's not vain to care about that, any more than it's vain for a woodworker to build a chair to last.
Paul Graham • Write Simply
Language is our way of giving legibility to ideas.
Only legible ideas survive.
An idea risks signal loss each time it is transmitted. A great idea survives the distance, becoming more legible the further it gets from the source. They survive the common sense test.
Great ideas also retain (or attain) legibility the longer they remain still. An idea at
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