While my account is only 1 year old, I've been a lurker in the EA community long before that. I enjoy going through posts and comments every day, and I appreciate how proactive everybody is in tackling and discussing different problems. Generally, my experience with the online community has ranged from neutral to positive.
But there is one thing that has been bothering me, and that is the writing quality / style in EA spaces. Even though there have been enough discussions about this before, I want to highlight that dense, obscuring writing can do a lot of harm, and that's something we should solve as an efficiency-oriented community.
It might sound like I'm talking about personal aesthetic preferences, but this is a genuine issue. EA prides itself on rigorous epistemics, but dense, obscuring writing is often the opposite of rigorous.
What is dense or obscuring writing?
To be straightforward: dense writing isn't the same as complex writing. A post can cover a truly difficult theme and still be clear. Dense writing is what happens when the manner of writing hides the point of the post rather than communicating it.
Dense writing tends to show up like this:
- The actual thesis is far down in the body of the post.
- Every sentence has so many caveats that no sentence commits to anything.
- Writing about an idea rather than stating it.
- Using group-specific terms where plain language would work just as well.
- Instead of flagging uncertainty once and moving on, the author writes it through every sentence until the main point disappears.
Many posts suffer from some combination of these writing ailments. A careful reader might finish a post and still have to guess what the author actually thinks or what their overall point is.
Why might it be harmful?
Why does a clear, straightforward manner of writing matter beyond aesthetics?
- EA exists to persuade people to act differently. Writing that's hard to understand can't persuade anyone who isn't already fluent in EA terminology.
- Dense writing may keep out thoughtful newcomers, people from adjacent fields, and community members who simply don't have time to decipher it.
- When a writing style becomes a badge of belonging, people start writing to sound EA rather than to communicate clearly.
- A vague sentence is harder to challenge than a precise one. If you can't state your claim plainly, that's often a sign the claim itself isn't fully formed yet.
- Readers spend mental energy decoding the writing rather than engaging with the ideas.
- Dense writing creates an extra barrier for the non-native English speakers in the EA global community. I am personally part of this group of non-native English speakers, and I enjoy reading about complex topics in a language that isn't my own. But using dense and convoluted writing on top of that complexity feels unnecessary, and it quickly turns into a tax on participation.
Intellectual honesty vs. intellectual dishonesty in writing
As George Orwell wrote in "Politics and the English Language": when there's a gap between what you think and what you're willing to say, you instinctively reach for long words and foggy sentences.
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." (George Orwell)
The uncomfortable implication is that muddled writing and muddled thinking feed each other. Forcing oneself to write a clear, committed sentence could help reveal that they don't actually have a clear, committed view yet.
Intellectual honesty looks like:
- Flagging genuine uncertainty clearly and once: "I'm not confident in this and here's why..."
- Stating your actual position, then acknowledging where it might be wrong
- Writing a claim that could, in principle, be falsified or challenged
Intellectual dishonesty (or at minimum, epistemic cowardice) looks like:
- Using cautious, tentative, or vague language to soften claims ( = hedging), not because you're uncertain, but because a clear claim feels risky to you
- Writing around your position to avoid being pinned down or challenged
Are there any benefits to dense writing?
To be entirely fair, there are some cases where denser or more technical writing has a purpose:
- It can filter out malicious agents (trolls, users who want to cause disruptions). A post written in plain language on a controversial topic is a wider target. Some degree of assumed shared knowledge does reduce noise in the comments.
- Established terminology can save space. Using one precise term that the community already understands is efficient and reasonable. That's not the same as obscuring.
These benefits hold when used intentionally and in balance. The problem is that most dense writing on the forum is a default writing style, one that makes your post harder to read, harder to challenge, and harder to engage with.
Are you interested in developing a straightforward and clear writing?
What qualifies me to give writing advice? I am a writer, an avid reader, and very much passionate about stylistics and rhetoric, and the general study of expressing yourself through text.
Good writing, like many other good things in life, comes from small habits, such as:
- Giving your post a good structure: an introduction for your main point, a body that supports it, complicates it, or refutes it, and a conclusion where you reflect on everything that you wrote about.
- Writing sentences and paragraphs that commit to something: if you're uncertain about something, flag it once and clearly, then move on.
- Not using the passive voice where you can use the active voice: replace "There seems to be a case to be made for prioritising this cause area" with "I think this cause area deserves more attention because...".
- Asking yourself before you post:
- What is my actual claim?
- Does every paragraph connect back to that claim?
- Have I put the work in so my reader doesn't have to?
Clear writing is a courtesy to everyone who gives you their time and attention.
What are your thoughts on this? I'd genuinely like to know. And I'll stop here before I prove my own point.
Thank you for taking the time to read this!
"Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"
- Kevin Malone (The Office, Season 8, Episode 10, "The Incentive").
Thank you for this very helpful post. I am insipred to reflect on my often muddled and repetitive writing style, and then improve.