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Generally love the ideas in here, but strongly disagree with this one: >At first, if you decide to explore such titles, you’ll blame the author for not using s

Generally love the ideas in here, but strongly disagree with this one: >At first, if you decide to explore such titles, you’ll blame the author for not using simpler words and for not expressing himself better. And if there are long-winded sections where you don’t get what the premise of the idea is, you’ll most probably ditch the book and find something else to read instead. >But these elaborate creations full of complicated phrases are what you need to level up your thinking. Simple writing is clear thinking. Yes, limiting yourself to well-written materials will limit your exposure to many ideas. That's how constraints of any kind work. But don't mistake long, meandering sentences with 10 dollar words as signs of genius. They're signs of lazy writing, lazy thinking, and a desire to impress the reader with how smart the author is. Writing simply takes hard work. It's easy to write complicated sentences. It's easy to be hard to understand. Clarity and conciseness are hard. Hemingway, Vonnegut, Thompson... they wrote powerful, thoughtful works. So do Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. So did Einstein. Their works be understood by anyone, despite the difficulty of their subjects.

ianleeclark 6y ago
> Simple writing is clear thinking ... They're signs of lazy writing, lazy thinking, and a desire to impress the reader with how smart the author is. "Simple writing," is perspective-based. If I were to take a introductory book on Economics, anyone steeped in the literature would likely consider it simple, as they've already internalized enough information to consume the book. To a seven year old, however, this is likely out-of-grasp. > Yes, limiting yourself to well-written materials will limit your exposure to many ideas. There are plenty of worthwhile things which are either poorly written or require a lot of effort. It's tragic to cast aside anything requiring effort to optimize your consumption of media.
- nickelcitymario 6y ago
  Late to reply here. I don't disagree with you, but I think you may have misunderstood me. Which is my error for leaving my opinion so open to wide interpretation. For clarity: 1. In any given field, there is a tendency to write in domain-specific language. (Heck, I just did it by using the term "domain-specific language".) To master any field you have to be willing to read that kind of stuff. 100%. But I still say it's lazy to write in domain-specific language. If it's in any way possible to express an idea in such a way that anyone can understand it, that's the better way to do it. There may be times when that's impossible. But I choose to assume that any time I fail to write simply, the failure is my own. 2. I'm not advocating limiting yourself to reading simply-written things. I'm advocating limiting yourself to writing simply. And I'm saying that writing simply is the harder thing to do. For example, I tend to use various readability software to scan my writing. My first draft tends to score a university-level score. I then work very hard to find ways to say everything I wanted to say in such a way that I score a grade 9 level or lower. 3. Finally, back to my original point: Choosing what to read based on how easy or difficult it is to read is silly. It doesn't prove whether the writer has something worth saying. Plenty of difficult-to-read stuff is total garbage. Plenty of easy-to-read stuff is gold. The opposite is also true.

ianleeclark 6y ago

> Simple writing is clear thinking ... They're signs of lazy writing, lazy thinking, and a desire to impress the reader with how smart the author is. "Simple writing," is perspective-based. If I were to take a introductory book on Economics, anyone steeped in the literature would likely consider it simple, as they've already internalized enough information to consume the book. To a seven year old, however, this is likely out-of-grasp. > Yes, limiting yourself to well-written materials will limit your exposure to many ideas. There are plenty of worthwhile things which are either poorly written or require a lot of effort. It's tragic to cast aside anything requiring effort to optimize your consumption of media.

nickelcitymario 6y ago
Late to reply here. I don't disagree with you, but I think you may have misunderstood me. Which is my error for leaving my opinion so open to wide interpretation. For clarity: 1. In any given field, there is a tendency to write in domain-specific language. (Heck, I just did it by using the term "domain-specific language".) To master any field you have to be willing to read that kind of stuff. 100%. But I still say it's lazy to write in domain-specific language. If it's in any way possible to express an idea in such a way that anyone can understand it, that's the better way to do it. There may be times when that's impossible. But I choose to assume that any time I fail to write simply, the failure is my own. 2. I'm not advocating limiting yourself to reading simply-written things. I'm advocating limiting yourself to writing simply. And I'm saying that writing simply is the harder thing to do. For example, I tend to use various readability software to scan my writing. My first draft tends to score a university-level score. I then work very hard to find ways to say everything I wanted to say in such a way that I score a grade 9 level or lower. 3. Finally, back to my original point: Choosing what to read based on how easy or difficult it is to read is silly. It doesn't prove whether the writer has something worth saying. Plenty of difficult-to-read stuff is total garbage. Plenty of easy-to-read stuff is gold. The opposite is also true.