Blattman on Klein on Better Communication

Chris Blattman summarizes Ezra Klein's talk on how to popularize research.

Key points:

1. "Tell people what’s new and surprising right away, and tell them immediately what they should walk away thinking."

2. "... start telling people why they should read in the title."

3. "... it helps to link your work to the broader issues that people care about."

4. "People like and share things that help them establish or reinforce an identity."

"Hardly anything is known of it except its fame"

Via Orange Crate Art, two wonderful paragraphs by Alberto Manguel at the New York Times.

Plato, in the “Timaeus,” says that when one of the wisest men of Greece, the statesman Solon, visited Egypt, he was told by an old priest that the Greeks were like mere children because they possessed no truly ancient traditions or notions “gray with time.” In Egypt, the priest continued proudly, “there is nothing great or beautiful or remarkable that is done here, or in your country, or in any other land that has not been long since put into writing and preserved in our temples.”

Such colossal ambition coalesced under the Ptolemaic dynasty. In the third century B.C., more than half a century after Plato wrote his dialogues, the kings ordered that every book in the known world be collected and placed in the great library they had founded in Alexandria. Hardly anything is known of it except its fame: neither its site (it was perhaps a section of the House of the Muses) nor how it was used, nor even how it came to its end. Yet, as one of history’s most distinguished ghosts, the Library of Alexandria became the archetype of all libraries.

Hardly anything is known of it except its fame: neither its site, nor how it was used, nor how it came to its end.

Calls this to mind:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.

We protect your clarity, your illiteracy, and write blog posts

The comma is often used to present a list of items. Here is an example from my Google Search screen this morning:

How we understand the list depends on the context; the context is provided primarily by the words that come before the list. When I read that blurb on my screen, this is how it came into my brain:

"We protect your privacy, we protect your data, and we protect put you in control. No that's not right. I think they mean 'We protect your privacy and your data, and put you in control.'"

I don't know what they mean, really, since they didn't say it clearly.

//

The problem is that the context, the "We protect", as presented, applies to the whole list. That means the words "we protect" are used with each element on the list. Even the third element. That's how I got "we protect put you in control" which is obviously incorrect.

To make the correction, I changed their ONE list of THREE things to TWO lists of TWO things each. My one list is a list of things that they protect ("your privacy and your data"). My other list is things they do ("We protect [you] ... and put you in control").

Am I making a mountain of a mole hill? I don't know. Does it matter to say what you mean?

//

I hope you find the title of this post objectionable.

"One of our viewers are in Bermuda"

That's what the news anchor said just now: "One of our viewers are in Bermuda".

IS, you illiterate bitch. ONE IS.

Errors in English reflect errors in reasoning. Not always, of course. But the difference between ONE and MORE THAN ONE is pretty simple, really.

Maybe all of their viewers are in Bermuda, I don't know. Well, I'm not in Bermuda. Maybe most of their viewers are in Bermuda. That's fine. But if the bitch knows about ONE of them, then it is ONE viewer IS in Bermuda.

Which viewer? One of our viewers. One of our viewers is in Bermuda.

Why should I listen to any of the news the bitch reports, if she cannot properly express the difference between "one" and "more than one"?

The Pause Between Words

The TV advertisement shows big bold print:

NEXIUM
LEVEL
PROTECTION

I'm thinking it's an ad for Nexium, so they want me to think of "nexium level" as "high level" or "strongest" or "best" or something like that. That's fine, that's what an advertisement is supposed to do.

But -- words still on-screen -- the announcer's voice comes over, repeating those words.

"Nexium," he says. "Level protection."

//

Here, let me do it with punctuation:

I expect the announcer to say Nexium-level protection. (A shorter pause before the word level than after.)

But what he says is Nexium: Level protection. (A longer pause before the word level than after.)

"Nexium-level" is a high level, presumably. But that's not what the announcer offers. He offers Nexium to us as "level protection". Flat, I guess, flat, uninspiring, average or maybe below average protection. Level protection, as opposed to Nexium-level. That's what the announcer offers.

Why? Because the announcer paused a little too long after the word "Nexium". He put the big space between "nexium" and "level" when he should have put it between "level" and "protection".

//

Did they not notice? It cannot be. They had to notice. But they kept it that way, so that what the announcer says comes across like an insult to the product. Too subtle to be funny, though.

Why do it that way?

Dunno. General illiteracy, perhaps? Cultivated illiteracy?

I can't say.

WHICH, not WHO

At Seeking Alpha:

However, the company is actually currently undervalued and that makes now the right time to buy the stock at a bargain price. The British company, who boasts an impressive US$4.003 billion profit ...

The company, which boasts an impressive profit. Despite what you may have heard, a corporation is not a person. It is an organization. The word "who" does not apply.

A corporation may be legally a person, but it is not literally a person. And you do wish to be literate, don't you, in your writing?

Structure and focus

Bryan Garner's LawProse Lesson #214:

Lawyers’ biggest failing as writers.

What’s the most pervasive flaw among legal writers? It’s the tendency to begin writing before fully understanding the message to be conveyed. Lawyers often don’t think through what they want to say until they’re already writing—and they therefore meander, backtrack, and even restart. Unless they spend a great deal of time rewriting and cutting, they end up submitting something verbose, rambling, repetitious, incohesive, and unpersuasive.

The mature writer first figures out the major propositions and then writes in support of them. The resulting product has both an overt structure and a strong focus.

This method of writing isn’t inborn; it’s learned. With some patience and humility, anyone can learn to do it.

Sometimes I use writing to explore ideas. That counts as "writing before fully understanding the message to be conveyed." Probably unfocused and unpersuasive. But sometimes that's okay.

Actually, for writing about the economy, I count is as a plus if ideas are presented for evaluation rather than crammed down your throat as the hard truth.

It's different for lawyers, I think. Oh, and there are some arguments I make, where I am as focused and convincing as possible. When I'm sure of something and when it's important.

But even the things we're sure of -- especially the things we're sure of -- occasionally need to be reconsidered, thought through again, seen in the light of a changed economy. A changing economy.