Depends on the purpose, I guess. If the point is just to convey information, ideas, then yes, write simply. If the purpose is to, at least in part, to entertain

Depends on the purpose, I guess. If the point is just to convey information, ideas, then yes, write simply. If the purpose is to, at least in part, to entertain, then don't. Thinking about the entertainment perspective and e.g. the journalists and bloggers I like, I think it's pretty similar to how we perceive music. I remember a paper from quite a few years ago that found (through fMRI) that we most enjoy music that our brain can mostly predict, but sometimes it would mispredict/would be wrong about the next few notes that follow. It's a balance. Non trivial writing must be similar. I.e. it may not be about music, but entertainment: it should be somewhat in line with what you expect but at the same time throw challenges at you. It should make you work at an enjoyable level. What he says about ageing, OTOH, is probably pretty universal. There is some debate in my country (Hungary) about the literature curriculum in elementary and high schools. Traditionally children are supposed to read XIX and early XX century novels from some of our great writers. This hasn't changed since I went to school decades ago. I remember hating these. Most of them were very hard to follow, very hard to decipher the story from the complex text. I guess what happened is that what they were writing was challenging to the level of being entertaining to their contemporaries (just like it is with today's writers, of course) but then the change in the language made it too challenging for most of us (at least the young, untrained minds).