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It's not my favourite style of writing, but it's by no means word salad. That paragraph presents a single coherent line of thought. They could have chosen simp

It's not my favourite style of writing, but it's by no means word salad. That paragraph presents a single coherent line of thought. They could have chosen simpler individual words, but there's nothing difficult in the phrasing or structure.

RHSeeger 7y ago
> They could have chosen simpler individual words And they should have. I can put together a sentence using a lot of words most people won't know. It will be a valid sentence, and it will mean what I want it to mean, but a lot of people won't be able to understand what I intended it to mean.
- foldr 7y ago
  It's so easy to look words up in a dictionary these days, but for some reason the tech community likes to take a perverse pride in reading at an 8th grade level. "How dare you use a word that happens not to be in my limited vocabulary?"
  - Retric 7y ago
    hoi polloi is a redundant phrase that’s intended to hide the simplicity of the idea. It’s simply lazy writing to mask lazy thinking.
    - foldr 7y ago
      I don't think so. It's chosen because it reflects a particular attitude towards the working classes. (The hoi polloi don't call themselves the hoi polloi.) It's also not in any way an obscure phrase. In the UK at least it's in common usage.
      - scroot 7y ago
        Correct. To put it another way: he is choosing this word because he is arguing that those in power (neoliberals) view common people as unsophisticated rabble who cannot and should not be making important decisions. It is not the author's view, but one emblematic of the very target of his criticism.
      - Retric 7y ago
        Coded language attempts to convey ideas through subtext. By doing so it’s reducing the carrying capacity of the information channel and lets authors pad words without adding meaning. That’s more or less the definition of lazy writing. Like a kid starting off with “It was a dark and stormy night...”
        foldr 7y ago
        It’s coded only in the sense that you have to know what the words mean to understand what the author is saying. Any piece of writing is “coded” in that sense. Choosing to write in a plodding, completely literal style also conveys a subtext. I'm not sure why you refer to “padding”. “Hoi polloi” is just as concise as any of its less flavorful synomyms (e.g. “common people”). The use of this phrase actually makes the piece more concise, as it removes the need to explicitly indicate the (already fairly obvious) attitudes of the upper classes to the people below them. Some things are significant enough to be worth indicating but not important enough to be worth mentioning. If you aren’t familiar with “hoi polloi” (and again, it's not actually a very obscure phrase at all!), it takes a few seconds to look it up in a dictionary. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hoi%20polloi https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hoi%20polloi
        Retric 7y ago
        That’s not what coded language means. I don’t think anything used in the article was obscure. The style depends on making things as clear as humanly possible so readers are beaten over the head with the subtext. As a simple experiment, take the article and write down the meaning being conveyed including subtext next to it.
        foldr 7y ago
        Ironically, I genuinely don't understand your last comment.
        Retric 7y ago
        Ok, I am going to approach this sideways. There is a somewhat related linguistic technique used in the cold war where a politician would go on TV and give a long speech that used the format “If the American people want peace, and the Russian people want peace, and (various junk), and Americans move their missiles out of Crimea, then we can have peace. (more platitudes)” An US intelligence officer would then translate this 20 minute speech into a few sentences of English that contained the relevant information. Effectively the information could be lifted directly from the speech and was very straightforward, but hidden among a lot of meaningless drivel. I am saying the author’s stile similarly lets the add a lot of padding due to their approach to conveying information.
    - mjw1007 7y ago
      In this case I think all that's going on is that the writer has already used the phrase "working classes" earlier in the sentence, and is following a convention that recommends avoiding repetition in this sort of case.
      - foldr 7y ago
        It's more than just that. If you read the initial part of the sentence (that dhsysusbsjsi cut off) you can see that the author is paraphrasing a worry of the ruling class. In this context it's natural to use the kind of vocabulary that they might have used in their own thoughts.
        Retric 7y ago
        Critically it’s redundant in the paragraph, much like ‘dark and stormy night’. The point is to convey something else which is made clear by the redundancy.
  - clarry 7y ago
    Same goes for their attitude towards programming languages. How dare you propose a language that I can't read without studying / become productive with in a weekend. How dare you propose using characters that can't be written without an IME on a US-ASCII keyboard. I find it quite disappointing. (I've been reading a lot about the APL family lately..)
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    I'll follow George Orwell's advice over yours, thanks. httpp://www.openculture.com/2016/05/george-orwells-six-rules-for-writing-clear-and-tight-prose.html
    - foldr 7y ago
      I doubt that Orwell would have considered any of the relevant words to be particularly obscure. At least, they certainly all would have been in his vocabulary.
  - 2019-nCoV 7y ago
    It is the mark of a charlatan to explain a simple concept in a complex way.
    - foldr 7y ago
      You are seeing conspiracies where there are none. The average humanities professor has spent their life reading books and has a bigger vocabulary than the average programmer. They’re not trying to pull a fast one on you. They just know more words than you do, and are used to talking to people who are familiar with said words. The sad thing is that none of the words in the quoted passage are obscure at all. If you don’t know at least most of these words, it’s safe to say that you have a poor vocabulary. This is really, really easy to fix if you just change your attitude. Instead of being angry with someone for knowing more words than you, just look up the words that you don’t know. Then you can respond to what the person is actually saying, instead of unfairly assuming that they're a charlatan.
      - 2019-nCoV 7y ago
        You need to realise that the only thing a career academic can really teach you is how to be a career academic.
        foldr 7y ago
        Meh, I’ve been in and out of academia and can be as cynical about academics as the next person. But taken literally, what you are saying is obviously untrue. I was taught by career academics all through my undergraduate and graduate education. How to be a career academic is the one thing that I failed to learn from the experience. I learned lots of other interesting stuff, though.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Think instead of the Feynmann Lectures. Part of his genius was being able to boil advanced stuff down to a freshman level. When he couldn't, he said "That means we don't really understand it." The humanities should aspire to that, rather than (or at least in addition to) "big words for big ideas".
  - tomrod 7y ago
    The tech community is used to working under constraints, be it time, compute, storage, etc. They also are praised when they focus on user experience. Using dense prose is a poor user experience. I find no fault with their conditioning to be egalitarian.
    - foldr 7y ago
      That’s true in general, but anyone who has difficulty with this particular article just has a low reading level. Tech folks love to mock the humanities, but back when a humanities education was more fashionable, being able to read prose of this level was about the bare minimum expected of an educated person.
      - tomrod 7y ago
        I assert the definition of an "educated person" evolves. Today, it is more advantageous to be literate in data and systems than to spend time chasing after humanities fashionability. Note that my point isn't arguing that humanities is without marginal value, only that the average value is not evolutionary advantageous. As such, it therefore fails to provide for most than its professors. In my view there is a commonality stretching back to Homeric bards. The storytelling gave value, but didn't feed or lead the community. I'm not sure what you have in mind when you state that tech folks mock the humanities. The point being laid out is that this particular piece is unnecessarily obtuse with its verbose prose, to the detriment of user experience.
        foldr 7y ago
        I don't follow the thread of your argument. If you think you can get rich by skimping on literacy, more power to you. But are people writing articles in the Church Life Journal of the University of Notre Dame then obliged to condescend to your level? Your comment is actually a lot stodgier and more obscure than the article itself.
        tomrod 7y ago
        Thank you for the feedback. Received in the spirit it was given. My prior comment was a representative example of the issue. That you found it stodgy and difficult to follow highlights the same issues the parent commentator points out about the source article.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    I think it is more that they are perfectly fine with advanced vocabularies and complexity but only when it actually serves a purpose. It is fine to go into dizzying and pedantic levels of nuance or loosely related trivia. It could be surmised as a 'earn your complexity' ethos.

RHSeeger 7y ago

> They could have chosen simpler individual words And they should have. I can put together a sentence using a lot of words most people won't know. It will be a valid sentence, and it will mean what I want it to mean, but a lot of people won't be able to understand what I intended it to mean.

foldr 7y ago
It's so easy to look words up in a dictionary these days, but for some reason the tech community likes to take a perverse pride in reading at an 8th grade level. "How dare you use a word that happens not to be in my limited vocabulary?"
- Retric 7y ago
  hoi polloi is a redundant phrase that’s intended to hide the simplicity of the idea. It’s simply lazy writing to mask lazy thinking.
  - foldr 7y ago
    I don't think so. It's chosen because it reflects a particular attitude towards the working classes. (The hoi polloi don't call themselves the hoi polloi.) It's also not in any way an obscure phrase. In the UK at least it's in common usage.
    - scroot 7y ago
      Correct. To put it another way: he is choosing this word because he is arguing that those in power (neoliberals) view common people as unsophisticated rabble who cannot and should not be making important decisions. It is not the author's view, but one emblematic of the very target of his criticism.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Coded language attempts to convey ideas through subtext. By doing so it’s reducing the carrying capacity of the information channel and lets authors pad words without adding meaning. That’s more or less the definition of lazy writing. Like a kid starting off with “It was a dark and stormy night...”
      - foldr 7y ago
        It’s coded only in the sense that you have to know what the words mean to understand what the author is saying. Any piece of writing is “coded” in that sense. Choosing to write in a plodding, completely literal style also conveys a subtext. I'm not sure why you refer to “padding”. “Hoi polloi” is just as concise as any of its less flavorful synomyms (e.g. “common people”). The use of this phrase actually makes the piece more concise, as it removes the need to explicitly indicate the (already fairly obvious) attitudes of the upper classes to the people below them. Some things are significant enough to be worth indicating but not important enough to be worth mentioning. If you aren’t familiar with “hoi polloi” (and again, it's not actually a very obscure phrase at all!), it takes a few seconds to look it up in a dictionary. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hoi%20polloi https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hoi%20polloi
        Retric 7y ago
        That’s not what coded language means. I don’t think anything used in the article was obscure. The style depends on making things as clear as humanly possible so readers are beaten over the head with the subtext. As a simple experiment, take the article and write down the meaning being conveyed including subtext next to it.
        foldr 7y ago
        Ironically, I genuinely don't understand your last comment.
        Retric 7y ago
        Ok, I am going to approach this sideways. There is a somewhat related linguistic technique used in the cold war where a politician would go on TV and give a long speech that used the format “If the American people want peace, and the Russian people want peace, and (various junk), and Americans move their missiles out of Crimea, then we can have peace. (more platitudes)” An US intelligence officer would then translate this 20 minute speech into a few sentences of English that contained the relevant information. Effectively the information could be lifted directly from the speech and was very straightforward, but hidden among a lot of meaningless drivel. I am saying the author’s stile similarly lets the add a lot of padding due to their approach to conveying information.
  - mjw1007 7y ago
    In this case I think all that's going on is that the writer has already used the phrase "working classes" earlier in the sentence, and is following a convention that recommends avoiding repetition in this sort of case.
    - foldr 7y ago
      It's more than just that. If you read the initial part of the sentence (that dhsysusbsjsi cut off) you can see that the author is paraphrasing a worry of the ruling class. In this context it's natural to use the kind of vocabulary that they might have used in their own thoughts.
      - Retric 7y ago
        Critically it’s redundant in the paragraph, much like ‘dark and stormy night’. The point is to convey something else which is made clear by the redundancy.
- clarry 7y ago
  Same goes for their attitude towards programming languages. How dare you propose a language that I can't read without studying / become productive with in a weekend. How dare you propose using characters that can't be written without an IME on a US-ASCII keyboard. I find it quite disappointing. (I've been reading a lot about the APL family lately..)
- lonelappde 7y ago
  I'll follow George Orwell's advice over yours, thanks. httpp://www.openculture.com/2016/05/george-orwells-six-rules-for-writing-clear-and-tight-prose.html
  - foldr 7y ago
    I doubt that Orwell would have considered any of the relevant words to be particularly obscure. At least, they certainly all would have been in his vocabulary.
- 2019-nCoV 7y ago
  It is the mark of a charlatan to explain a simple concept in a complex way.
  - foldr 7y ago
    You are seeing conspiracies where there are none. The average humanities professor has spent their life reading books and has a bigger vocabulary than the average programmer. They’re not trying to pull a fast one on you. They just know more words than you do, and are used to talking to people who are familiar with said words. The sad thing is that none of the words in the quoted passage are obscure at all. If you don’t know at least most of these words, it’s safe to say that you have a poor vocabulary. This is really, really easy to fix if you just change your attitude. Instead of being angry with someone for knowing more words than you, just look up the words that you don’t know. Then you can respond to what the person is actually saying, instead of unfairly assuming that they're a charlatan.
    - 2019-nCoV 7y ago
      You need to realise that the only thing a career academic can really teach you is how to be a career academic.
      - foldr 7y ago
        Meh, I’ve been in and out of academia and can be as cynical about academics as the next person. But taken literally, what you are saying is obviously untrue. I was taught by career academics all through my undergraduate and graduate education. How to be a career academic is the one thing that I failed to learn from the experience. I learned lots of other interesting stuff, though.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Think instead of the Feynmann Lectures. Part of his genius was being able to boil advanced stuff down to a freshman level. When he couldn't, he said "That means we don't really understand it." The humanities should aspire to that, rather than (or at least in addition to) "big words for big ideas".
- tomrod 7y ago
  The tech community is used to working under constraints, be it time, compute, storage, etc. They also are praised when they focus on user experience. Using dense prose is a poor user experience. I find no fault with their conditioning to be egalitarian.
  - foldr 7y ago
    That’s true in general, but anyone who has difficulty with this particular article just has a low reading level. Tech folks love to mock the humanities, but back when a humanities education was more fashionable, being able to read prose of this level was about the bare minimum expected of an educated person.
    - tomrod 7y ago
      I assert the definition of an "educated person" evolves. Today, it is more advantageous to be literate in data and systems than to spend time chasing after humanities fashionability. Note that my point isn't arguing that humanities is without marginal value, only that the average value is not evolutionary advantageous. As such, it therefore fails to provide for most than its professors. In my view there is a commonality stretching back to Homeric bards. The storytelling gave value, but didn't feed or lead the community. I'm not sure what you have in mind when you state that tech folks mock the humanities. The point being laid out is that this particular piece is unnecessarily obtuse with its verbose prose, to the detriment of user experience.
      - foldr 7y ago
        I don't follow the thread of your argument. If you think you can get rich by skimping on literacy, more power to you. But are people writing articles in the Church Life Journal of the University of Notre Dame then obliged to condescend to your level? Your comment is actually a lot stodgier and more obscure than the article itself.
        tomrod 7y ago
        Thank you for the feedback. Received in the spirit it was given. My prior comment was a representative example of the issue. That you found it stodgy and difficult to follow highlights the same issues the parent commentator points out about the source article.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I think it is more that they are perfectly fine with advanced vocabularies and complexity but only when it actually serves a purpose. It is fine to go into dizzying and pedantic levels of nuance or loosely related trivia. It could be surmised as a 'earn your complexity' ethos.