top | item 25291695

(no title)

Being able to read the words doesn't mean the comment makes sense. Reading it over and over again, yeah sure I can understand it, but I don't see any "point" or relation to the original comment.

Some people just seem to feel "smart" by wording things as convoluted as possible, using fancy words and references. The truth is, it is much harder to express thoughts clearly with simple, yet elegant words. Mostly because that makes everyone understand it, and everyone able to see through the facade. Meaning that whatever you say will need to hold up to much more scrutiny and you can't hide behind a facade of "fancyness" that scares off readers.

It's similar to coding. Writing simple code for complex programs is much much harder than writing complex code for complex problems, or even worse complex code for simple problems, which many people like to do.

discuss

ghodith|5 years ago

Is that post too fancy though? Sure, "Linnaean classification" could/should be replaced with "taxonomy" or something similar for readability, but none of the rest of the post has and uncommon references or words. The point also seems obvious, and the relevance to the post self explanatory. This rant on obscurantism seems unwarranted with reference to a post written at a pretty standard reading level.

dalbasal|5 years ago

If I have to guess (and it's fun, so why not), I think what triggered the rant was exactly what the comment was describing. I'd call it recursive, but I don't want to sound fancy.

My comment wasn't categorical. IE, I didn't get on either the "T&Cs are evil bullshit" or "contracts are the basis of civilization" side. If you're reading for category, everything else is flowery nonsense. Just tell me which side you're on and why.

dalbasal|5 years ago

What does this have to do with the comment you responded to?

I reread it. One fancy word: Linnaean. Considering this is HN, that should be OK.

I get the feeling you're reacting to the fact that I didn't state a position or a conclusion in my short HN comment. So basically, you don't like that my HN comment isn't a tweet.

bjarneh|5 years ago

> Some people just seem to feel "smart" by wording things as convoluted as possible, using fancy words and references.

If nobody did this, we would not have political sciences :-)