11 ms·

There was this sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t m

There was this sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on the list. I had this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly so I can figure out what the hell it means.” So I stopped-at random-and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.” Then I went over the next sentence, and realised that I could translate that one also. Then it became a kind of empty business: “Sometimes people read; sometimes people listen to the radio,” and so on, but written in such a fancy way that I couldn’t understand it at first, and when I finally deciphered it, there was nothing to it. -- Feynman I disagree. After going through quite a few research papers in my time, I've found the best are the ones that are direct and to the point. Many papers I've spent many hours/days trying to unravel just to realize the concepts were straightforward, not very novel, and there wasn't much of real substance to the paper. Meanwhile, some of the most impactful papers I've read are direct and to the point. Kadmellia, Bitcoin, BitTorrent, DynamoDB, Firecracker, etc. It seems like, when you have something of substance to say, you say it. When you don't you overcompensate by falling back on building an intricate puzzle of jargon and convoluted equations in an attempt to make what you're saying sound far more important than it really is. As LLMs get better, I look forward to the day where every journal has a standard LLM filter you're required to apply to your paper that unravels all of this nonsense and rewrites it a more straightforward way, if not to directly publish than just for the editors to verify there isn't a simpler way to convey your ideas. I suspect that if we had an EIL5 filter for most journal articles, we'd discover that a majority of the words that get published have very little substance at all.

Vervious 3y ago
Systems research papers do not represent all research papers out there, not even in computer science. In cryptography, certainly a paper with formal definitions and proofs can be much more valuable than a corresponding blog post. It's a field where formalism is desired, if not necessary. Otherwise you can't check other people's "proofs", or even know what model you're working in. I think, since people haven't come up with better formalisms, sometimes it's quite obtuse, which gets mistaken as "academic writing", when really it's a best effort to formalize.
- renonce 3y ago
  Requiring formalism does not preclude attaching an informal but intuitional description of the formal definition or proof. Unless the authors don't understand very clearly what they are talking about, or they want to prevent others from understanding their concepts too easily, I don't see why there is a reason for the authors not to attach an EIL5 in addition to formalism.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Vervious 3y ago
    Sure. But it's an ELI5 "in addition to formalism", not "in lieu of formalism". In theory conferences like STOC or FOCS, the first section of the paper often comprises such an overview. Certainly some papers are better written than others. But sometimes a blog post cannot replace a paper, unless it also goes into the depth and detail that formalism requires. (Then it becomes a 30 page blog post, where most people don't read past the intro.)
    - acchow 3y ago
      The complaint about research papers is that almost all of them omit the ELI5 and provide only the formalism. You can have both and weave them together into a digestible narrative. I see Physics textbooks sometimes written this way.
      - smallnamespace 3y ago
        Papers are mostly read by other researchers, where the added background is actively bad because it obscures the real meat of the paper to the main audience. If you just wanted a digestible intro then you would usually buy a textbook. I think the argument that every research paper ought to be a mashup of a textbook + the actual research to be a bit silly from a “people should specialize at what they’re good at” standpoint. Put in another context, I also don’t want every recipe to reintroduce what it means to “fry” or “braise” or “marinate”. We have Google for that.
lamontcg 3y ago
> It seems like, when you have something of substance to say, you say it. And this blog post probably could be condensed into 1/4 of its size or less with a less conversational/bloggy tone.
- coldtea 3y ago
  There are words that are added to drive the point in multiple ways, ease into it, and make the text more engaging. And there are words that are added to add empty padding, keep up academic pretenses, and appear smart. The post could have been condensed, but it would lose the former, not the latter.
  - ticviking 3y ago
    Good rhetoric takes time and energy from both the author and reader
cratermoon 3y ago
I believe Feynman understood that he was oversimplifying, and I believe he was able to do because his reason for reading the paper was not the same as the reason another sociologist might have. Thus a sentence like, "The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels", does, to a non-expert, mean "people read", but to another sociologist of a researcher in related fields, phrases like "individual member", "social community", and "visual, symbolic channels" would terms of art. That means an expert in the field could read "social community" and it would mean, cognitively, an entire set of concepts in the field. In short, jargon matters. People here can talk about functional, procedural, and object-oriented programming because each of the three words has more than just the dictionary meaning - to those of use in the field. In the same way we can talk about linear algebra and know it doesn't mean "algebra on lines". Yes, it's possible to write scientifically without jargon and wordiness, but it's a lot of effort and takes much more space to say "a group who follow a social structure within a society (culture, norms, values, status). They may work together to organise social life within a particular place, or they may be bound by a sense of belonging sustained across time and space"[1] 1 https://othersociologist.com/2013/11/20/sociology-of-community/ https://othersociologist.com/2013/11/20/sociology-of-communi...
- PoignardAzur 3y ago
  Well, maybe, but you can rationalize arbitrary amounts of pointless jargon that way. Besides, in the example Faynman gives the simple sentence is actually shorter. Maybe that shorter sentence loses some information that the jargon carried, but Occam's razor suggests the writer was just trying to sound smarter.
  - mattkrause 3y ago
    Some bad writing certainly comes from trying to sound “academic” or “scholarly” but there’s more to it than that. A lot of research involves lumping and splitting: what underlying properties do these seemingly-different share (or vice versa). For example, reading text is just one possible instantiation of a “visual symbolic channel.” Traffic lights, road signs, gauges and dials, logos, and clocks also carry information the same way. If you want to discuss “reading and reading-like activities”, you may want some kind of umbrella term. Plus, you may want to contrast them with other ways of sharing information: non-symbolic systems that literally depict the item in question (photos on a picture menu, for example) or using a different sense altogether, like church bells for telling time.
dekhn 3y ago
I hadn't seen that Feynman quote before, but I discovered then when reading Donna Harraway's books (Cyborg Manifesto, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_OncoMouse, Primate Visions). The criticism was """Haraway's work has been criticized for being "methodologically vague"[39] and using noticeably opaque language that is "sometimes concealing in an apparently deliberate way""""
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Haraway's work has been criticized for being "methodologically vague"[39] and using noticeably opaque language that is "sometimes concealing in an apparently deliberate way So you're saying that "Her work is basically handwaving and bullshitting".
  - dekhn 3y ago
    Yes, but also, wrapping the handwaving and bullshitting in a layer of obfuscation: "Michel Foucault’s biopolitics is a faccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open feld. By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism—in short, cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of “Western” science and politics—the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the refections of the other—the relation between organism and machine has been a border war" (donna was woke before woke was a thing)
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > (donna was woke before woke was a thing) Donna Haraway was born 6 years after “stay woke” in its sense as an admonition to maintain alertness to the racist context was coined. Leaving aside a debate over whether her work is a good match for “woke”, she very much cannot have been woke before woke was a thing. (Before its recent replacement of “politically correct” as the American Right’s preferred, meaning-stripped, label for everything it disagrees with, sure, but “woke” was a thing long before that.)
squarepizza 3y ago
> There was this sociologist Found the problem.
darepublic 3y ago
> I disagree. After going through quite a few research papers in my time, I've found the best are the ones that are direct and to the point. Many papers I've spent many hours/days trying to unravel just to realize the concepts were straightforward, not very novel, and there wasn't much of real substance to the paper. Can say the same thing about code. Some people just honestly don't want to give away how simple the core logic is seemingly, and will lead you through myriad twists and turns to finally see the point.
npsomaratna 3y ago
Not an academic here, but I've read (and continue to read) through research papers regularly. The original bitcoin paper is a great example. I was able to follow the paper almost fully at my first read itself—despite my not having a formal background in maths. ...and as you said, many of the insubstantial papers hide behind jargon and unnecessarily complex equations, just to camouflage their lack of substance. It's frustrating to spend time deciphering a paper, only to realize that you've essentially wasted that time.

Vervious 3y ago

Systems research papers do not represent all research papers out there, not even in computer science. In cryptography, certainly a paper with formal definitions and proofs can be much more valuable than a corresponding blog post. It's a field where formalism is desired, if not necessary. Otherwise you can't check other people's "proofs", or even know what model you're working in. I think, since people haven't come up with better formalisms, sometimes it's quite obtuse, which gets mistaken as "academic writing", when really it's a best effort to formalize.

renonce 3y ago
Requiring formalism does not preclude attaching an informal but intuitional description of the formal definition or proof. Unless the authors don't understand very clearly what they are talking about, or they want to prevent others from understanding their concepts too easily, I don't see why there is a reason for the authors not to attach an EIL5 in addition to formalism.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Vervious 3y ago
  Sure. But it's an ELI5 "in addition to formalism", not "in lieu of formalism". In theory conferences like STOC or FOCS, the first section of the paper often comprises such an overview. Certainly some papers are better written than others. But sometimes a blog post cannot replace a paper, unless it also goes into the depth and detail that formalism requires. (Then it becomes a 30 page blog post, where most people don't read past the intro.)
  - acchow 3y ago
    The complaint about research papers is that almost all of them omit the ELI5 and provide only the formalism. You can have both and weave them together into a digestible narrative. I see Physics textbooks sometimes written this way.
    - smallnamespace 3y ago
      Papers are mostly read by other researchers, where the added background is actively bad because it obscures the real meat of the paper to the main audience. If you just wanted a digestible intro then you would usually buy a textbook. I think the argument that every research paper ought to be a mashup of a textbook + the actual research to be a bit silly from a “people should specialize at what they’re good at” standpoint. Put in another context, I also don’t want every recipe to reintroduce what it means to “fry” or “braise” or “marinate”. We have Google for that.

lamontcg 3y ago

> It seems like, when you have something of substance to say, you say it. And this blog post probably could be condensed into 1/4 of its size or less with a less conversational/bloggy tone.

coldtea 3y ago
There are words that are added to drive the point in multiple ways, ease into it, and make the text more engaging. And there are words that are added to add empty padding, keep up academic pretenses, and appear smart. The post could have been condensed, but it would lose the former, not the latter.
- ticviking 3y ago
  Good rhetoric takes time and energy from both the author and reader

cratermoon 3y ago

I believe Feynman understood that he was oversimplifying, and I believe he was able to do because his reason for reading the paper was not the same as the reason another sociologist might have. Thus a sentence like, "The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels", does, to a non-expert, mean "people read", but to another sociologist of a researcher in related fields, phrases like "individual member", "social community", and "visual, symbolic channels" would terms of art. That means an expert in the field could read "social community" and it would mean, cognitively, an entire set of concepts in the field. In short, jargon matters. People here can talk about functional, procedural, and object-oriented programming because each of the three words has more than just the dictionary meaning - to those of use in the field. In the same way we can talk about linear algebra and know it doesn't mean "algebra on lines". Yes, it's possible to write scientifically without jargon and wordiness, but it's a lot of effort and takes much more space to say "a group who follow a social structure within a society (culture, norms, values, status). They may work together to organise social life within a particular place, or they may be bound by a sense of belonging sustained across time and space"[1] 1 https://othersociologist.com/2013/11/20/sociology-of-community/ https://othersociologist.com/2013/11/20/sociology-of-communi...

PoignardAzur 3y ago
Well, maybe, but you can rationalize arbitrary amounts of pointless jargon that way. Besides, in the example Faynman gives the simple sentence is actually shorter. Maybe that shorter sentence loses some information that the jargon carried, but Occam's razor suggests the writer was just trying to sound smarter.
- mattkrause 3y ago
  Some bad writing certainly comes from trying to sound “academic” or “scholarly” but there’s more to it than that. A lot of research involves lumping and splitting: what underlying properties do these seemingly-different share (or vice versa). For example, reading text is just one possible instantiation of a “visual symbolic channel.” Traffic lights, road signs, gauges and dials, logos, and clocks also carry information the same way. If you want to discuss “reading and reading-like activities”, you may want some kind of umbrella term. Plus, you may want to contrast them with other ways of sharing information: non-symbolic systems that literally depict the item in question (photos on a picture menu, for example) or using a different sense altogether, like church bells for telling time.

dekhn 3y ago

I hadn't seen that Feynman quote before, but I discovered then when reading Donna Harraway's books (Cyborg Manifesto, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_OncoMouse, Primate Visions). The criticism was """Haraway's work has been criticized for being "methodologically vague"[39] and using noticeably opaque language that is "sometimes concealing in an apparently deliberate way""""

coldtea 3y ago
>Haraway's work has been criticized for being "methodologically vague"[39] and using noticeably opaque language that is "sometimes concealing in an apparently deliberate way So you're saying that "Her work is basically handwaving and bullshitting".
- dekhn 3y ago
  Yes, but also, wrapping the handwaving and bullshitting in a layer of obfuscation: "Michel Foucault’s biopolitics is a faccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open feld. By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism—in short, cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of “Western” science and politics—the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the refections of the other—the relation between organism and machine has been a border war" (donna was woke before woke was a thing)
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > (donna was woke before woke was a thing) Donna Haraway was born 6 years after “stay woke” in its sense as an admonition to maintain alertness to the racist context was coined. Leaving aside a debate over whether her work is a good match for “woke”, she very much cannot have been woke before woke was a thing. (Before its recent replacement of “politically correct” as the American Right’s preferred, meaning-stripped, label for everything it disagrees with, sure, but “woke” was a thing long before that.)

squarepizza 3y ago

> There was this sociologist Found the problem.

darepublic 3y ago

> I disagree. After going through quite a few research papers in my time, I've found the best are the ones that are direct and to the point. Many papers I've spent many hours/days trying to unravel just to realize the concepts were straightforward, not very novel, and there wasn't much of real substance to the paper. Can say the same thing about code. Some people just honestly don't want to give away how simple the core logic is seemingly, and will lead you through myriad twists and turns to finally see the point.

npsomaratna 3y ago

Not an academic here, but I've read (and continue to read) through research papers regularly. The original bitcoin paper is a great example. I was able to follow the paper almost fully at my first read itself—despite my not having a formal background in maths. ...and as you said, many of the insubstantial papers hide behind jargon and unnecessarily complex equations, just to camouflage their lack of substance. It's frustrating to spend time deciphering a paper, only to realize that you've essentially wasted that time.