I just wrote two hundred times ten words like this, on why we should not use sun-colored stuff we pull out of the ground as money. I think I want to hurt myself.
Have you ever wondered what makes a light bright? Lights are bright because they are very hot, and hot things become bright. The hotter something gets, the brighter it will be.
But why are hot things bright? Everything is made up of many very tiny things, and these tiny things are moving. When things are hot, the tiny things move very, very fast, and when they are cool the tiny things move slower.
When the tiny things hit each other, they give off light. The faster they are going when they hit each other, the bluer the light they give off is. When they move faster, they also run into each other more often, so they give off more light. That means that when the tiny things move very, very slowly, the light they give off is too red for you to see.
That means as things get hot, they will become slightly red, then get brighter and turn toward the color of the sun, then get really bright and turn white.
Inside a light there is a long but not wide thing that gets very hot when you run power through it. It gets hot enough to be white and bright enough to light up a room.
Change after I put this up: I have a class that I have to write a twenty hundred word paper for. I am thinking about writing the whole paper like this. That would be a way to show that I don’t need to use big words to write a good paper, and I also would not get bored while writing. This is fun.
A brain cell that makes a lot of noise can stop other cells that are close from talking at the same time.
Fourier synthesis, not as easy:
When you hear a sound, little pieces of tight, heavy air or not packed, light air are hitting your ear. The way the inside of your ear moves can be used to figure out what the sound was like and make it again. We build things that are like big ears to make the sounds. The inside of the built ear pushes air so that it’s tight and heavy again, instead of like before where the tight, heavy air pushed on your ear.
How far your inside ear part has moved at each moment can be drawn to make lines that goes up and down as it flies right. When a point of the funny line is in the middle, that shows the moments when the inside ear part wasn’t moving or was moving between being more pushed inside or more pushed outside.
Given a funny line that shows what a sound was like, we can show how its shadow falls on different directions in the space of slowly changing lines that always look the same after you move along them a little way, or that much again, and so on. To do this though, you have to be able to state the area that lies between the middle line and the line that comes from the funny line times the funny line. Also, the repeating lines have to not have any shadow on each other. How big the shadow is between two funny lines is figured out using the inner-times game with the area finding game. The area has to be nothing.
There are lots of kinds of lines like this that people who study sound can use, but the most often used ones are like the shadows of point going along the side of a ring.
This was fun. For a similar exercise in explaining things with a restricted vocabulary see Guy Steele’s lecture “Growing a Language”. He begins using only monosyllabic words, introducing new polysyllabic words in terms of monosyllabic and previously defined polysyllabic words.
I want to see all the people here write their comments using this. Call it working on making things easier to understand for people who aren’t you.
CHANGE MADE AFTER I WROTE THIS THE FIRST TIME: Wow, it’s actually making things worse, sort of. Do any people here want to make a thing that helps you see when you’re using big words that uses the top 5000 words? Top 10000?
In a way that I find funny, this thing that tells you how hard something is to read says that your writing needs you to read like a high school or college student to understand them easily the first time.
I have now written a total of about six thousand words on five fairly concept-heavy subjects (linear algebra, parallax and cepheid variables, the gold standard, the normal distribution/Central Limit Theorem, and complex numbers), There are a couple of observations I would like to make.
Although it’s fun, and stylistically appealing, to write as if you were talking to a five-year-old, there are plenty of sentences that would be thought of as “adult”-level sentences which require little to no modification. There are a lot of words in the top 1000 list. Also, there are specific words I find myself trying to use over and over again. “Shape”, “triangle” and “measure” crop up a lot as far as subjects with geometric interpretations go. I would be interested in seeing a log of all the forbidden words that crop up across all users.
The stars are very far away. We sometimes figure out how far away the stars are by looking at them from two different places and seeing how high up they are in the sky. We use what we know about three-sided things to learn how far away they are.
The most far-away we can figure out needs two different places to look from that are very far away from each other, or very good man-made eyes in space. On this world we can only use this plan for stars that would take two or three tens of years for their light to reach us (light years), or with very good man-made eyes in space a ten and a half hundred light years, seeing how high up the stars are in the sky when the man-made space-eyes are on different sides of the sun.
Some stars that have died will flash in space. How bright they are and how fast they flash is almost the same no matter where they are, so we can use this to figure out how far away they are, even if they are very, very, very far away. This lets us figure out how far away some of the most far away things in space are.
My social philosophy essay:
Problems between people and groups of people can be fixed by using ‘philosophy’ which is a way of thinking better, by using ways of thinking that are known to work and carefully checking if you’ve got it right. This can mean checking if the words you are using mean the same things to you and to other people, if you are acting like some things are true but not saying them, or if you have thought of all the things that are made true by the things you say (or think) are true. People and groups of people often think different things are true, or have different ideas of the best way to fix the same problem. We need them to talk to work out why they don’t agree and work out the ways we are going to fix the problems.
Describing philosophy was really hard, can anyone give a good definition of rationality (other than “thinking good”).
In much the same vein, there is Phil in words of one syll. Lots of folks took a try there; here is one from the guy who wrote the post (which deals with one of his best known views): “Could a chap have just the same sort of brain as me, and not feel a thing?”
Say we have many bad things that can happen, and we would like all of them not to happen. For each thing we know the chance that it happens. How can we show that we can avoid every bad thing?
One way is if all the chances are small, and there are not too many bad things. In the worst case, every bad thing happens alone, so that two bad things never happen together. Then to find the chance that a bad thing happens, we could add up all the chances for all the bad things. If this is less than one, then there must be a way for no bad thing to happen.
We can sometimes do better if most of the bad things do not care about each other: if the chance that one bad thing happens only changes because of a few other bad things (one way this can happen is if all the bad things are about dice rolls, and there are only a few bad things about each die). Now if we only add up the chances for the bad things that one bad thing cares about, and this is still small (less than one in four), then we can still avoid all the bad things, no matter how many there are!
I think either the place with the words in the box or the set of agreed-upon ideas we follow when writing in this way should change so that we can bring new words into our shared set of words. I’m so used to being able to do this that not being able to do so makes writing in this way more of a pain than something to enjoy. To show what I mean, I might say that ‘to define’ means to set out a new word which the person who I’m speaking to might not know, and give them a way of knowing what I mean when I use that word later. That way, I can state ideas with less words: now that I have set out a meaning for the word ‘define’, the above could be written in a different way as ‘I would like to be able to define new words’. In fact, I think that this would be so nice that I might try to define more and more words in an easy to read way until I’m able to write as usual without spending any time taking all of the words I usually use and putting bigger sets of shorter words in their place.
What are readability calculators basing their levels on? Is there any empirical data about what features of text make it more or less easy to read? Word choice is one thing, but structure and other less obvious things probably also play a part.
Most readability metrics use some combination of the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word (the latter being a crude metric of word rarity), though some compare against a whitelist of common words similar to (but usually larger than) the one XKCD’s using. If people feel a need to use enough circumlocution to make up for removing rare words, the gains in the latter might not outweigh the losses in the former.
The details vary quite a bit by formula. I tried several readability analyses on portions of this post vs. an Up-Goer 5 compliant version, and found that while the compliant version was consistently scored lower, the deltas varied from almost nothing to several grade levels.
(As an aside, plugging stuff into the Up-Goer 5 Text Editor kind of reminds me of Mad Ape Den. Not quite as restrictive, though.)
There was a man called Mr Godel who lived before most of the people living now were living. He was very good and putting numbers together and thinking about things. He showed everyone that when you have a way of thinking about things, that way of thinking can’t explain how it works from the inside. So that way of thinking could never be complete. This was considered very important by lots of bright people, and helped us understand how we think and make other things that think.
Numbers can be put in four-sided boxes. Just like you can add and take away alone numbers, and make many times alone numbers, and share alone numbers between alone numbers, you can do things like this (but not just the same) to four-sided boxes of numbers. It is important that boxes of numbers can eat each other. Alone numbers can not eat each other.
Any thing that happens which looks like a straight line on a piece of paper can be made into a box of numbers. This makes boxes of numbers very strong. A big box of numbers can eat a small box of numbers and make another small box of numbers that means something. So a big box of numbers about babies can eat a small box of numbers about all the babies there are now, and make a small box of numbers about all the babies there will be tomorrow. Or a big box of numbers about where things are can eat a small box of numbers that says where one important thing is now, and make a small box of numbers that says where the important thing is tomorrow.
One big box of numbers can eat another big box of numbers (if it’s not too big or not too small) and do what that box of numbers does on top of what it did to begin with. So a box of numbers about how many babies are going to be made can eat a box of numbers about what happens to babies after they are made, and say what is going to happen to babies that have not been made yet.
.
I just wrote two hundred times ten words like this, on why we should not use sun-colored stuff we pull out of the ground as money. I think I want to hurt myself.
Have you ever wondered what makes a light bright? Lights are bright because they are very hot, and hot things become bright. The hotter something gets, the brighter it will be.
But why are hot things bright? Everything is made up of many very tiny things, and these tiny things are moving. When things are hot, the tiny things move very, very fast, and when they are cool the tiny things move slower.
When the tiny things hit each other, they give off light. The faster they are going when they hit each other, the bluer the light they give off is. When they move faster, they also run into each other more often, so they give off more light. That means that when the tiny things move very, very slowly, the light they give off is too red for you to see.
That means as things get hot, they will become slightly red, then get brighter and turn toward the color of the sun, then get really bright and turn white.
Inside a light there is a long but not wide thing that gets very hot when you run power through it. It gets hot enough to be white and bright enough to light up a room.
Change after I put this up: I have a class that I have to write a twenty hundred word paper for. I am thinking about writing the whole paper like this. That would be a way to show that I don’t need to use big words to write a good paper, and I also would not get bored while writing. This is fun.
Lateral inhibition, surprisingly easy:
Fourier synthesis, not as easy:
This was fun. For a similar exercise in explaining things with a restricted vocabulary see Guy Steele’s lecture “Growing a Language”. He begins using only monosyllabic words, introducing new polysyllabic words in terms of monosyllabic and previously defined polysyllabic words.
As far as I can tell, this is a transcript of the talk, which some, like me, may find more convenient.
Upvoted for the talk. I recommend anyone enjoying this exercise go watch that talk.
Don’t you mean:
.
I have now written a total of about six thousand words on five fairly concept-heavy subjects (linear algebra, parallax and cepheid variables, the gold standard, the normal distribution/Central Limit Theorem, and complex numbers), There are a couple of observations I would like to make.
Although it’s fun, and stylistically appealing, to write as if you were talking to a five-year-old, there are plenty of sentences that would be thought of as “adult”-level sentences which require little to no modification. There are a lot of words in the top 1000 list. Also, there are specific words I find myself trying to use over and over again. “Shape”, “triangle” and “measure” crop up a lot as far as subjects with geometric interpretations go. I would be interested in seeing a log of all the forbidden words that crop up across all users.
.
The stars are very far away. We sometimes figure out how far away the stars are by looking at them from two different places and seeing how high up they are in the sky. We use what we know about three-sided things to learn how far away they are.
The most far-away we can figure out needs two different places to look from that are very far away from each other, or very good man-made eyes in space. On this world we can only use this plan for stars that would take two or three tens of years for their light to reach us (light years), or with very good man-made eyes in space a ten and a half hundred light years, seeing how high up the stars are in the sky when the man-made space-eyes are on different sides of the sun.
Some stars that have died will flash in space. How bright they are and how fast they flash is almost the same no matter where they are, so we can use this to figure out how far away they are, even if they are very, very, very far away. This lets us figure out how far away some of the most far away things in space are.
My social philosophy essay: Problems between people and groups of people can be fixed by using ‘philosophy’ which is a way of thinking better, by using ways of thinking that are known to work and carefully checking if you’ve got it right. This can mean checking if the words you are using mean the same things to you and to other people, if you are acting like some things are true but not saying them, or if you have thought of all the things that are made true by the things you say (or think) are true. People and groups of people often think different things are true, or have different ideas of the best way to fix the same problem. We need them to talk to work out why they don’t agree and work out the ways we are going to fix the problems.
Describing philosophy was really hard, can anyone give a good definition of rationality (other than “thinking good”).
A slightly better definition (which still fits within the constraints) would be “thinking well”.
Reminds me of “Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: In Words of Four Letters or Less”.
In much the same vein, there is Phil in words of one syll. Lots of folks took a try there; here is one from the guy who wrote the post (which deals with one of his best known views): “Could a chap have just the same sort of brain as me, and not feel a thing?”
Say we have many bad things that can happen, and we would like all of them not to happen. For each thing we know the chance that it happens. How can we show that we can avoid every bad thing?
One way is if all the chances are small, and there are not too many bad things. In the worst case, every bad thing happens alone, so that two bad things never happen together. Then to find the chance that a bad thing happens, we could add up all the chances for all the bad things. If this is less than one, then there must be a way for no bad thing to happen.
We can sometimes do better if most of the bad things do not care about each other: if the chance that one bad thing happens only changes because of a few other bad things (one way this can happen is if all the bad things are about dice rolls, and there are only a few bad things about each die). Now if we only add up the chances for the bad things that one bad thing cares about, and this is still small (less than one in four), then we can still avoid all the bad things, no matter how many there are!
.
Did anyone ever make a thing to write words in which has only the half hundred times one hundred (or hundred times hundred) most used words in it?
I am asking because I want to use this interesting thing for important uses.
I think either the place with the words in the box or the set of agreed-upon ideas we follow when writing in this way should change so that we can bring new words into our shared set of words. I’m so used to being able to do this that not being able to do so makes writing in this way more of a pain than something to enjoy. To show what I mean, I might say that ‘to define’ means to set out a new word which the person who I’m speaking to might not know, and give them a way of knowing what I mean when I use that word later. That way, I can state ideas with less words: now that I have set out a meaning for the word ‘define’, the above could be written in a different way as ‘I would like to be able to define new words’. In fact, I think that this would be so nice that I might try to define more and more words in an easy to read way until I’m able to write as usual without spending any time taking all of the words I usually use and putting bigger sets of shorter words in their place.
Meta
What are readability calculators basing their levels on? Is there any empirical data about what features of text make it more or less easy to read? Word choice is one thing, but structure and other less obvious things probably also play a part.
Most readability metrics use some combination of the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word (the latter being a crude metric of word rarity), though some compare against a whitelist of common words similar to (but usually larger than) the one XKCD’s using. If people feel a need to use enough circumlocution to make up for removing rare words, the gains in the latter might not outweigh the losses in the former.
The details vary quite a bit by formula. I tried several readability analyses on portions of this post vs. an Up-Goer 5 compliant version, and found that while the compliant version was consistently scored lower, the deltas varied from almost nothing to several grade levels.
(As an aside, plugging stuff into the Up-Goer 5 Text Editor kind of reminds me of Mad Ape Den. Not quite as restrictive, though.)
.
Non-permitted words in italics.
The wording of the challenge is a long way from living within its own constraints.
There was a man called Mr Godel who lived before most of the people living now were living. He was very good and putting numbers together and thinking about things. He showed everyone that when you have a way of thinking about things, that way of thinking can’t explain how it works from the inside. So that way of thinking could never be complete. This was considered very important by lots of bright people, and helped us understand how we think and make other things that think.
Numbers can be put in four-sided boxes. Just like you can add and take away alone numbers, and make many times alone numbers, and share alone numbers between alone numbers, you can do things like this (but not just the same) to four-sided boxes of numbers. It is important that boxes of numbers can eat each other. Alone numbers can not eat each other.
Any thing that happens which looks like a straight line on a piece of paper can be made into a box of numbers. This makes boxes of numbers very strong. A big box of numbers can eat a small box of numbers and make another small box of numbers that means something. So a big box of numbers about babies can eat a small box of numbers about all the babies there are now, and make a small box of numbers about all the babies there will be tomorrow. Or a big box of numbers about where things are can eat a small box of numbers that says where one important thing is now, and make a small box of numbers that says where the important thing is tomorrow.
One big box of numbers can eat another big box of numbers (if it’s not too big or not too small) and do what that box of numbers does on top of what it did to begin with. So a box of numbers about how many babies are going to be made can eat a box of numbers about what happens to babies after they are made, and say what is going to happen to babies that have not been made yet.
(I should do other things).