[diiq]

I am always disappointed when someone cloaks their ideas in such thick intellectual veneer. I can't do justice to someone else's voice, but a few minutes were all that was necessary to make the first paragraph sound like a person:

(translated from semi-scientific posturing) "One of the things that makes us human is thinking about the big picture. Unfortunately, it's easy to make simple mistakes in the attempt think about the biggest picture: the universe. (Please understand that by 'the universe', I mean to say everything; it makes no sense to me to speak of things that aren't a part of the universe.) I sometimes unthinkingly imagine about the universe as the collection of all the things that exist; and that makes sense, doesn't it? Maybe not. What about pi? The relationship between a the diameter of a circle and it's circumference appears in all kinds of surprising places --- it seems like it is an inherent part of the universe. Pi doesn't exist on it's own, though; at least, I can't imagine pi, floating in space all by itself. Pi seems to be a part of the fabric in which everything else exists. Any theory of the universe must take that fabric into account as well. As far as anyone can tell, the laws that underly the universe, the fabric, is the same everywhere. The fabric unifies the universe. So if I try to think about the universe sensibly, I can't talk about anything outside of it (a philosopher might say 'use monism instead of dualism'), and I must explain the unified whole (holism rather than reductionism)."

Chris Langan, wherever you are, you can do it! Don't be afraid to show your ideas to the world naked as the moment you thought them. The worst you can do is be wrong, and that's not bad at all.

[ellyagg]

Do you read scientific journals much? Papers are usually filled with long, grammatically complex sentences full of obscure technical jargon. Given the subject matter, it seems a bit silly to hold the author to a different standard.

[diiq]

I do, and they disappoint me for the same reason; I work in a machine research lab, and we work very hard to write papers which are both clear and publishable. I hold every writer to the same standard --- communicate in the clearest possible way. Sometimes the form/content relationship requires difficult prose, but that is surely a rare occurrence outside of modern fiction.

He published online, and suffered from no external pressure to obfuscate at all; if he made simple things complex it was from an inability to communicate or a desire to conceal.

[chrischen]

Perhaps simple to him just seems complex to you and me, and he simply can't help it.