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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2939 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 8, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-case-against-most-books

Tldr: Most books are not information-dense.

I largely agree. It seems to me that most writing has many more examples than required (I might need only 2 to get the point, 5 is far too many), long and numerous analogies, etc.

Do you have any examples of writing that actually follows the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle?

I've also realized that the DRY principle is a great thing for writing code but terrible for conversation. If you only say what needs to be said, then you come off as "dry". I suppose 1 more reason added to the "conversation isn't about exchanging ideas or information" bin.

I disagree with Hanania, and the DRY principle here. Learning information is difficult, and incorporating it into your thought even moreso. Especially in such an information saturated world.

Having multiple examples and dense information in books is a feature. Humans can't just read something once and automatically grasp it. We need to hear ideas multiple times in different ways to understand.

Yeah, I'm with you on this. Multiple examples helps the reader triangulate around the idea the author is trying to convey, and it provides redundancy (in the engineer's sense) in case one or two examples fails to click with a reader for idiosyncratic reasons.

There have been a few books I've read that I got almost nothing out of because some core idea, premise, or explanation within it just didn't make sense to me and I couldn't follow the author's reasoning from there on out. If they had only belabored their point with another couple more examples and "to put it another way . . .", it might have salvaged it for me.

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