But, seriously, in the age of generative AI and summarizers, there’s no need to pretend. We might as well just say the thing we want to say without the need for the reader to invoke a summarizer on it.
How do you feel about conciseness and educational resources? I’m in two minds, on the one hand I am often as someone learning battling jargon defined by jargon—I see a word, I want to know what it means so I can keep reading. I don’t want to read a chain of three wikipedia articles. And that filler and fluff can actually distract and make the lesson or knowledge harder to retain. The reader/student is more likely to misunderstand or to miss core information as they are assaulted by tangents.
On the other hand, I do accept that repetition can improve retention. And I have hedged that this can sometimes be an effective means of getting across ideas. This is different from, say, a meandering or intentionally obscure piece of writing. In that the length comes from repetition, not from “filler” or tangents. And that sometimes not giving away “spoilers” helps a student/reader better understand the information being imparted.
What kinds of writings do you think we should and shouldn’t be tightening up?
I agree, in education resources repetition serves a certain purpose and cannot be easily brushed off. The right amount of information density in education resources is an art, I’d assume.
But, seriously, in the age of generative AI and summarizers, there’s no need to pretend. We might as well just say the thing we want to say without the need for the reader to invoke a summarizer on it.
How do you feel about conciseness and educational resources? I’m in two minds, on the one hand I am often as someone learning battling jargon defined by jargon—I see a word, I want to know what it means so I can keep reading. I don’t want to read a chain of three wikipedia articles. And that filler and fluff can actually distract and make the lesson or knowledge harder to retain. The reader/student is more likely to misunderstand or to miss core information as they are assaulted by tangents.
On the other hand, I do accept that repetition can improve retention. And I have hedged that this can sometimes be an effective means of getting across ideas. This is different from, say, a meandering or intentionally obscure piece of writing. In that the length comes from repetition, not from “filler” or tangents. And that sometimes not giving away “spoilers” helps a student/reader better understand the information being imparted.
What kinds of writings do you think we should and shouldn’t be tightening up?
I agree, in education resources repetition serves a certain purpose and cannot be easily brushed off. The right amount of information density in education resources is an art, I’d assume.