Crimes Against Clarity

Recently I gave a talk at the Christian Web Conference in which I argued that we often confuse clarity with profundity. I noted that one of Ernest Hemingway’s most profound stories was not only clear, but short enough to fit on Twitter:

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

Hemingway is said to have considered this his best work. While I would agree, I suspect his literary agent would not. Six word stories are harder to sell than sixty thousand word novels. Conventions in form often work against simplicity and clarity, even when the results are more profound.

Apparently, this is true not only for literature but for economics too. In the latest issue of Econ Journal Watch , economics professor David Hakes confesses his crimes against clarity :

Think back to your first years in graduate school. The most mathematically complex papers required a great deal of time and effort to read. The papers were written as if to a private club, and we felt proud when we successfully entered the club. Although I copied the style of these overly complex and often poorly written papers in my first few research attempts, I grew out of it quite quickly. I didn’t do so on my own. I was lucky to be surrounded by mature confident researchers at my first academic appointment. They taught me that if you are confident in your research you will write to include, not exclude. You will write to inform, not impress. It is with apologies to my research and writing mentors that I report the following events.

Hakes relates how he helped a colleague prepare a paper: “We managed to reduce the equations in the paper to six. At this stage the paper was perfectly clear and was written at a level so that it could reach a broad audience.” But after submitting it to a journal is was deemed “self-evident.”

So Hakes made it more complicated:

While making the same point as the original paper, the new paper would be more mathematically elegant, and it would become absolutely impenetrable to most readers. The resulting paper had fifteen equations, two propositions and proofs, dozens of additional mathematical expressions, and a mathematical appendix containing nineteen equations and even more mathematical expressions. I personally could no longer understand the paper and I could not possibly present the paper alone.

[ . . . ]

Even for mathematicians, the paper may no longer pass a cost-benefit test. That is, the time and effort necessary to read the paper may exceed the benefits received from reading it.

The process reveals another insight provided by economics: Preference falsification - the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures.

“I wish I could promise that in the future I will always write to inform rather than to impress,” Hakes says, but if a future editor asked him to unnecessarily complicate the paper he’d “probably do as they requested rather than fight for clarity.”

(Via: Braniac )