opinions-essays-onSimplicity

This essay is under construction

There is too much to learn and not enough time. We need to value succinctness and clarity. We need to write more readable, cursory overviews of subjects.

We need to give college students time to read such overviews in Liberal Education classes, rather than giving them in-depth looks at a few randomly chosen specialized subtopics.

Geopolitical and economic problems like war and poverty are innately complicated. But they are made more complicated, and harder to follow, when people conceal the true motivations behind some government action, when political correctness forces people to beat around the bush, or when lack of government transparency forces one to become an expert in a matter just to know the facts. Simplicity in government should therefore become a major goal, on par with, say, Justice.

The Error of Humility

Humility isn't usually a bad thing, but in this case it causes a particular problem.

In school, when class was going too fast for me, I used to blame it on myself; after all, once I understood the concepts they seemed ridiculously simple. If I was smart enough, I would have been able to learn it at the pace the professor expected of me. I don't mean that I was real down on myself about these things, I just mean that I wasn't sure that classes were actually too hard.

I bet everyone thinks this. Rather than think, "this class needs to be dumbed down", they think, "well, i don't really belong in this class; look, that guy over there understands. The class is being taught right, but I'm just stupid".

But after getting a piece of paper from a top university that claims that I'm smart, I'm think that at the least, I can be pretty certain that I'm not dumb.

Therefore, now days, when I don't understand something, whether in class or in the supermarket, I figure that it's not just me, there's probably plenty of others who don't.

But I don't think you have to go to college to have the privilage of declaring "this is too confusing". The mistake is when people say, "well, i'm probably just dumb". It's pathetic that it took a certificate from a university before I wasn't afraid to say, "if i'm don't understand this, it must be hard to understand".

TODO: this section is too long and meandering

Examples

• i was inspired to write this b/c i just read "socrates in 90 minutes". i think the ____ in 90 minutes series was a great idea (just as i like the ____ for dummies series). i'm sure many will say, "socrates can never be appreciated in 90 minutes". but i feel that the alternative they are arguing is that everyone should take a course on Socrates. And one on Plato. And one on Hume. And one on Nietzsche. Etc. I used to think these people had seriously considered the problem of education and concluded that this was the way to go (see The Mistake Of Humility, above). But after attended 7 years of higher education, now I realize that most professors have ridiculous expectations about the amount of time their students have to spend on their class, and even think the students will somehow have time to go beyond the classwork and read up on the stuff on their own.

The truth of the matter is this. The choice is not between 90 minutes of socrates or a few weeks of socrates. The choice is between 90 minutes of socrates or no socrates at all.

• i feel that i've been deprived of a Liberal Education in college, which I very much desired. But I also wanted to become a technical or mathematical researcher. There was not time for both. The time we did have, in the Western Civ classes in freshman year, were not spent giving an overview of Western Civ, but rather in detailed, high-level, sadly incomprehensible lectures on specific subtopics. This is partly my fault, as I did not sign up for the Great Works track, but rather for Myth & Modernity, something about modernism and German philosophy. Note also that I used to blame myself for not getting enough out of these lectures, because they were obvious full of cool insights, but I just wasn't smart enough to keep up with them. Nope; see Mistake of Humility, above.
• the ideal essay is a hypertext document with a clear Main Page, whose Main Page is as short as possible (2 written pages for most Idea kind of things, such as this essay). Examples and elaborations are then followed up on within the other pages. But most people only read the Main Page, so the emphasis is on editing that for maximal clarity.
• this is perhaps influenced by my participation in wikis, where you can edit other people's things. Some Great Wikis contain many pages which are one or two written pages long, very clear, yet chock full of insight (example: MeatballWiki?).
• i don't know much about them, but from the little i know, i feel a kinship with the medieval Scholastics. There was already a bunch of stuff; their task was to make that stuff more useful by making it easier to absorb.
• i'm impressed by the writing style in college-level scientific and math textbooks from the 50s. it seems so clear for some reason.
• i might be a bad person to champion simple, clear writing, because i've been told by multiple sources that i'm very confusing and long-winded, both in speech and in writing. My girlfriend often says that. Also, the universal feedback from a committee of 7 professors on my 4 qualifying exam essays was that I had a bad writing style. (however, the qual feedback may not be relevant, because one of their problems with my style on one of the essays was that I used bullet points rather than complete sentences, and gave a broad overview, rather than focusing more narrowly, and delving into the intricacies and current doubts behind the knowledge i presented; which is exactly what I'm advocating here. also, katherine warned me (after the fact), that my qual essays were too informal and that academics would hate that)

bits that may be edited out:

I don't think i'm that smart; I think my good academic performance is because I have great interest in academic subjects, and so I naturally enjoy thinking in the manner required and so got lots of practice doing so, even when I was little. In fact, I have lots of trouble learning and remembering lots of things, while my friends have no problem with them.

document history

onSimplicity, onConformity, onMorality started 04/12/20 5:20 AM the day i came home for xmas break, due to my worsening insomnia and the time shift

usually i prefer to set down ideas on public wikis, believing that to be a better medium, but in these cases i think an exposition containing my own opinions and examples from my life will work better (for now).