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I remembering seeing this with a Swedish SocDem politician, many years ago. She was pretty well educated, academically sound background, married to a competent

I remembering seeing this with a Swedish SocDem politician, many years ago. She was pretty well educated, academically sound background, married to a competent academic, and then she wrote an article that was completely unsound. One can have different positions, but you don't suddenly reason badly because you change your mind. She became a top name either soon before or after this. This is a different thing than what the article talks about though, there's nothing wrong, after all, with precise language; unsound thinking and arguments aren't the same as this claimed increase in complexity but I think parties often force people to take views that make no sense and then a person without integrity agrees and becomes a 'leader'.

PaulHoule 1y ago
There's a "worse is better" thing in software where things that are intellectually incoherent but workable beat out things that are coherent but too complicated. See this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507076 A person who is capable of high-quality thinking might just find that low-quality thinking sells better. Look at how many people think Joe Rogan and Eliezer Yudkowsky are the great public intellectuals of our age. (Actually if I was still smoking I'd probably enjoy smoking a joint with the former -- the latter wouldn't let me get within 100 miles because I'd give him no quarter)
ahazred8ta 1y ago
As Doonesbury put it: "A verb, Senator, we need a verb!" https://web.archive.org/web/20151031131012/https://writing.rocks/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Doonesbury-a-verb-senator.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20151031131012/https://writing.r... Walter White gave us "This is science, Jesse. We must be exact or we might just as well be in philosophy class." There's an essay on fuzzy big picture culture versus detail culture; it comes down to a difference between narrative word-based comprehension versus web-of-facts, logic, and mathematical thinking. https://www.someweekendreading.blog/math-illiterate-rulers/ https://www.someweekendreading.blog/math-illiterate-rulers/

PaulHoule 1y ago

There's a "worse is better" thing in software where things that are intellectually incoherent but workable beat out things that are coherent but too complicated. See this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507076 A person who is capable of high-quality thinking might just find that low-quality thinking sells better. Look at how many people think Joe Rogan and Eliezer Yudkowsky are the great public intellectuals of our age. (Actually if I was still smoking I'd probably enjoy smoking a joint with the former -- the latter wouldn't let me get within 100 miles because I'd give him no quarter)

ahazred8ta 1y ago

As Doonesbury put it: "A verb, Senator, we need a verb!" https://web.archive.org/web/20151031131012/https://writing.rocks/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Doonesbury-a-verb-senator.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20151031131012/https://writing.r... Walter White gave us "This is science, Jesse. We must be exact or we might just as well be in philosophy class." There's an essay on fuzzy big picture culture versus detail culture; it comes down to a difference between narrative word-based comprehension versus web-of-facts, logic, and mathematical thinking. https://www.someweekendreading.blog/math-illiterate-rulers/ https://www.someweekendreading.blog/math-illiterate-rulers/