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You're not sure what the point is, but you still believe you can present a good summary of it? One might suggest that if you know you don't understand something
by EliRivers 11y ago
You're not sure what the point is, but you still believe you can present a good summary of it? One might suggest that if you know you don't understand something, the odds of being able to present a good summary are slim. There's more to summarising something than removing words.
On the plus side, kudos for saying "summary" rather than tldr.
- cryoshon 11y agoI was saying that the author didn't do a good job of being clear (which is often by design in these sorts of articles-- clear language is seen as anti-artful) so I tried to assemble a summary of what he's actually saying on my own.
- EliRivers 11y agoWell, I read the same article and in my opinion you've missed an awful lot. Your summary picks out one small aspect, and present that as the whole point. It's not a scientific paper that can have the finding compressed into an abstract (or as the hipsters say now, a "tldr"). It's a discussion; it's meant to engage you, and trying to pick out a single point as the summary is like saying the point of hiking is to travel from A to B. It even criticises inaccessible literary analysis: "...the problem with “academic” literary analysis is that too often it sounds like talking at the reader or, worse, talking down to him or her." So is it massively lacking in self-awareness, if it suffers this problem itself? I didn't find it at all difficult to read, but then English is my first language so that will always be an advantage I have in reading English. I think this writing is clear, but you're trying to read it like a mathematical derivation or the write-up of an experiment.