You ever see a dog that’s got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it’s never going to make the connection.
Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.
Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?
If my experiences are anything to go by, my vocabulary and way of speaking. Or really a lot of people’s.
This is something I don’t get. These people, when given a mathematical equation, treat the whole equation as a whole puzzle and use all its pieces to solve it. But if you say something that’s simply too wordy or where the words are “too thesaurus-like” (often to fix the first thing), they don’t “add it up” and they dump on you with Jimmy Neutron memes. I (while not being Marxist myself) remember one of my first experiences in the fediverse was talking about Marxist concepts to people who identified as Marxists and wondering from their confused reaction if they knew what Marxism entailed.
Yeah that sounds about right, considering this word salad of a comment.
Where do you draw the line between “word salad” and “non-word-salad”?
For a better response to writing, an exercise an instructor had my class do was to look at a list of example sentences and remove every word that wasn’t essential. I don’t think your writing is so difficult to interpret but a more plain style can be helpful for some. Most people aren’t trying to ‘add it up’ in conversation like it’s math, it should be quick and intuitive. The way we read our own writing is different than how others will emphasize or pace it which can cause misinterpretation as well.
I feel like I see a lot of arguments online that are really just people misinterpreting each other repeatedly.
I’ve gotten complaints either way. If I want something I say to be short, that requires me to use what many consider oddly specific words. When people read them, they complain I’m a walking thesaurus. Then I might try the reverse to please people, where I deconstruct those oddly specific words until I get a long sentence. And the same crowd has then often complained my messages are unrealistically long. Either way, especially as a writer, what I say comes from a mind that gravitates towards the analogous and the compatible, i.e. my way of communicating is made to branch out.
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“I can’t speak clearly or concisely. This is other people’s fault.” -You
Point to where I said it was anyone’s fault.