
How to Write Clearly, Think Clearly, and Learn Easily - ZLOB-o-ZLOB
http://www.ai.uga.edu/mc/WriteThinkLearn.htm
======
algorias
"Fact 2: Nonetheless, the world is objectively real."

I really disliked how the author randomly throws in opinions and beliefs like
that in a context that didn't really warrant it. I thought I was going to read
about epistemology; instead I got a summary of his worldview.

~~~
yters
Ok, go stand in front of a bus.

~~~
algorias
The point is not whether or not he's right (which is an incredibly tricky
question, actually, when you stop generalizing in a cartoonish way), it's that
he's presenting something as fact which is definitely not provable.

~~~
ionfish
Provability (that is, being able to be proved by deductive means) is not
generally taken to be a requirement for asserting a fact. To prove something
is to demonstrate that it could not be otherwise (that it is necessary, given
the logic employed and that that the premises are true).

For example, I might assert that "Tomorrow, the gravitational constant be the
same as it is today." This seems like a fact: we have pretty strong
theoretical justification for it, given certain empirical evidence, an
assumption of regularity in nature, and the continued predictive success of
the general theory of relativity. However, if tomorrow the gravitational
constant is slightly different to what it is today, then although no
(deductive [1]) logical law has been contravened (as would have to be the case
if a provable statement turned out to be untrue), my assertion was clearly not
a fact.

However, proofs (as in mathematical or logical proofs) are obtained through
deductive reasoning, not inductive reasoning, as my statement was. Thus, I
would argue, there is nothing wrong with presenting something as a fact which
is not provable. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to assert very much at all:
the restricted epistemology obtained would rule out all of science, for
starters, and might even cast doubt on certain classes of observation
statements.

Of course, you may have meant something other by 'provable' than I do, in
which case clarification would be appreciated, since you presumably meant
something by your assertion that facts must be provable, and it would be nice
to know what it was!

[1] It is controversial as to whether a general inductive logic can be
formulated.

~~~
Arkanin
I think he is getting at the epistemological problem of first premises. If the
only fact of epistemology that I accept is "I exist", the statement "Objective
reality exists" cannot be proved.

I'm sure there's better formal language for this, but we could benefit by
making a distinction between "facts in principle" and "facts in practice".
Let's say a fact in principle is derived from a priori knowledge, whereas a
fact in practice is one that we have accepted and depend on in order to make
pragmatic decisions and survive. In principle, I believe that I exist but that
I cannot prove objective reality exists. In practice, I accept that objective
reality exists and that if I stand in front of a bus I will be hit.

------
physcab
"If you can't figure out how to organize your material, try this: Write down
ideas in random order, then sort them".

I wish they taught me to do this before the 5-paragraph essay format. The
latter of which is a useless exercise that has almost no application in real-
life writing.

~~~
darkxanthos
The 5-paragraph essay isn't meant to be the end all be all but a starting
point on writing your thoughts down in a cohesive manner.

Even the great essayists (MLK Jr. for one) followed this to a degree.
Introduce your point, support your point, tie it all together and conclude.

You learn it in what? Like 5th grade or Jr. High? Why would it be the pinnacle
of real-life adult writing? But that very simplistic structure is the basis
for much more complicated essay formats that you learn about in college
(Compare & contrast, cause and effect, argumentative, etc.).

~~~
tsally
The 5-paragraph essay is often the last essay format one learns seriously. We
spend the most time teaching it and no other essay format even comes close. A
one semester writing course freshmen year in college does not count.

Also, just because some people can run well with 10 pound weights strapped to
each leg doesn't mean it's a good idea to run with weights strapped to your
legs. I've seen great 5-paragraph essays, but then again, I've also seen some
great Visual Basic programs as well. These things serve as great starting
points, but it is important to progress beyond them as you become more
educated.

~~~
dhimes
I think of 5 paragraph essays as a construction used by teachers so they can
evaluate how well a student is learning the process, akin to "showing your
work" in mathematics. More of a scaffold for the learning process than
anything else.

~~~
darkxanthos
Thank you that's all that I mean. You stop using it once you know why.

------
DavidSJ
He says:

 _Popper’s principle implies: (1) Your guesses and opinions have to be
testable. They have to say what will not happen. Beware of vague predictions
that are compatible with any outcome!_

But that is Popper's view as to the demarcation of _science_. Popper was not
of the view that science is the only realm of legitimate knowledge. And it's
in conflict with:

 _If all knowledge depends on physical measurement, then not only do you lose
truth, beauty, and love, you also lose mathematics, logic, and even
epistemology!_

~~~
tlb
Truth, beauty and love can be tested. If I think someone loves me, I can hug
them and see how they hug back. If I think something's beautiful, I can hang
it on my wall next to something else I think is beautiful, and see if I still
like it next week. Truths can be tested by finding & testing physical
implications of that truth. None of these tests are absolute Popper-grade
refutations, but they're good enough to be useful.

Startups are generally based on some hypothesis (like "people want to
communicate by multicasting 140-character messages"). Not refutable, exactly,
but testable by building a company around it. Smart founders keep track of
their hypotheses and are always looking for evidence for and against them.

~~~
jimbokun
"I can hang it on my wall next to something else I think is beautiful, and see
if I still like it next week."

You know if you still like it, but you don't know if it is beautiful. You
might like ugly things.

~~~
Arkanin
"Beauty" is an aesthetic concept of the mind that varies between each person,
not a property that you can give to an object. The object is beautiful because
its perceiver finds it to be so; without the perceiver, there is no beauty.
Therefore, it is a mistake to talk about beauty as an intrinsic property ("X
is beautiful") when it is actually a perception ("Jim finds X beautiful.").

When we say "X is beautiful", it is actually shorthand for "Lots of people
find X beautiful", or "The consensus is that X is found to be beautiful".

/aspie

~~~
jimbokun
'"Beauty" is an aesthetic concept of the mind that varies between each person,
not a property that you can give to an object.'

Not everyone would agree to this. There are people who believe that objective
beauty really is "out there" in the world, independent of human judgement.

Your opinion is very fashionable at the moment, particularly among academics
and intellectuals, and similar arguments are applied to morality and anything
else not subject to empirical investigation. But as I said, this way of
thinking is by no means universal.

~~~
Arkanin
But what, other than intelligent beings, can ponder the concept of beauty?
When we say something is beautiful, we mean it is aesthetically pleasing, and
without a perceiver of an object, there is nothing to be aesthetically
pleased.

If you believe in god, space aliens, etc., we can shift the admirer of beauty
to another perceiver, but still, without the perceiver there is no concept of
beauty ascribed to the object.

------
mitko
Really strong beginning just to spoil it in the second part with his own
opinions about the scientific method and how to make conclusions.

In my opinion this single topic is impossible to fit in a presentation. A book
is more reasonable format. I would recommend "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance"

------
systemtrigger
text-only version: <http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/142733/Text/on_writing.html>

~~~
RK
Thank you. The white text on a red background was killing me.

~~~
Chocobean
I found the colour okay, if a little distracting, but having to constantly
scroll across slides was the most irritating bit.

~~~
olliesaunders
Press space.

------
frig
There's probably a deep insight for AI to be had by whoever discovers why
verbose, repetitive writing is easier and more "natural" than taut, clear
prose (which is "unnatural" insofar as it is rare and hard to achieve).

Not some folk-theory or heuristic, but actually understanding the mechanism.

~~~
jerf
You dislike verbose, repetitive writing because its information content is
low. Taut, clear prose has high information content. The taut, clear prose you
are talking about is usually higher in total content than masses of verbose,
repetitive writing, despite the quantity of words. I mean "information" in the
information theoretic sense, especially in the semi-informal "extent to which
the words are a surprise" sense (which I find the most useful formulation for
measuring English text, though note there's a relative component to that
definition).

It is not surprising that more effort is required to create more information.
I don't see where we need a new theory here.

~~~
frig
I wasn't clear or you're blurring information content and density and thereby
missing my point (!). Consider:

\- VERBOSE: “One of the best things you can do for yourself to improve your
writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary.”

\- TAUT: “To improve your writing, cut out unnecessary words.”

In at least the senses I care about I don't see any information in TAUT absent
from VERBOSE; if you see any such information TAUT please do point it out.

Which is what I was getting at: TAUT prose communicates identical thoughts
with fewer words; why is it so difficult and unnatural to generate?

I find this curious. I now have some suspicions but nothing extremely well-
formed.

(!) You'd be right that in the context of essays-for-school the target
wordcount is predetermined and information is expensive so the lazy satisfy
the requirement(s) with the verbal equivalent of double-spacing + jumbo font.

~~~
mcav
In verbose form, it's almost like letting your thoughts spew onto the page
directly. With taut writing, a lot of that mental clarification is done in
your head before it hits the page.

~~~
frig
But why are thoughts jumbled, mostly?

Is there anything to be learned from the structure of the jumbling?

No answers, just getting it out there.

------
restruct
"Instead of doing what’s easy for you, do what’s easy for your reader."

It is easier for the _author_ to convert the PowerPoint into a PDF, but what
is easier for the _reader_ is if the information was in HTML/web format. The
author should package the information so that it enters our heads as easily as
possible.

This is why user-centered interfaces are better than programmer-centered
interfaces. The point is to make it easier for the user, not easier for the
programmer.

~~~
selven
Indeed. You're taking the effort of making it once, but the collective readers
are taking the effort of reading it tens, hundreds or thousands of times.

------
ams6110
The five steps in the writing process: Planning, Drafting, Revising, Editing,
Formatting.

Formatting is last. This is why I like to write in plain text (I use emacs,
but that's not really important). When I use something like MS Word,
_formatting_ is in your face from the get-go (probably 80% of the toolbar and
menu items concern formatting), and I tend to sidetrack into formatting too
much at the expense of properly organizing my ideas.

~~~
CamperBob
He left out the all-important sixth step: "Compiling."

("If you can spell

    
    
        int main(int argc; char* argv[]);
    

you can learn how to spell its and it’s!" -- page 47)

~~~
berntb
I'd guess that for quite a few people on this site, C is closer to their
native language than English...

(I'm not an example. My English was good enough to read books about three
years before I learned C.)

~~~
jordan_stewart
I believe the point was not about the quote itself, but about the fact that
that C code does not compile . . .

~~~
berntb
Thanks, I got the point (not forgotten an old love _completely_. :-) If I
hadn't, jacquesm's comment would have gotten me to reread and note the ";".

I just commented on something else.

(I learned the difference between "its" and "it's" embarrassingly recently, by
the way.)

------
abalashov
This strikes me as a mechanistic, black-and-white view of certain aspects of
thinking and learning that are, in reality, replete with many nuances,
qualifications and caveats. It's a classic case of simplistic, Philistine
shotgun approaches.

His disdainful view of the value of rhetoric and vicious hostility to the
achievements of high culture, or the use of language in artistic ways to
express in more aesthetically appealing ways thoughts that can be expressed
more "simply" toward largely semantically equivalent ends (from an empirical
perspective, anyway) also rubs me the wrong way.

I mean, sure, saying something as tersely as possible is often valuable and a
good lesson to teach. It is also often the wrong thing to do or, more likely
than being flat-out wrong it simply has costs as well as benefits. What
precisely those are depends on what you're trying to achieve with your
writing.

Should one take Dr. Covington's suggestions when writing a novel, an
interesting anecdote, or a persuasive expository essay, even if one is
otherwise partial to the goals of clarity in the thinking and writing that
goes into it? Do most writers we consider interesting, compelling, thought-
provoking, intriguing, entertaining, etc. follow his stylistic suggestions?
Would their writing conserve those essential qualities if they did?

In short, while his objectives may be good lessons for people that write in
unclear, logically incoherent or circumlocutory ways, he seems to tend toward
very extreme reductions. It is a necessary part of intellectual development to
learn to grapple with the complexity that inheres in many facets of existence,
and that includes gestalt complexity that cannot be reduced to very simple
atoms as, for example, in the ontology Functional Programming preaches. The
world is not a giant software construction.

~~~
abstractwater
_Should one take Dr. Covington's suggestions when writing a novel, an
interesting anecdote,_

I really don't think that's what Covington meant.

~~~
abalashov
By his own criteria, I am taking the title of his presentation literally and
denotationally, in the most simpleminded, straightforward and unambiguous way
possible. After all, if he doesn't quite say precisely what he means, he's not
writing very "clearly," is he?

He purports to teach me to "How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly, and
Learn Complex Material More Easily."

I don't buy it.

------
Lagged2Death
Am I the only one who sees irony in the existence of a "Write More Clearly"
lesson presented as a disjointed set of sentence fragments?

~~~
MikeCapone
Did you think it was unclear?

I found it very clear.

------
wallflower
Nice introduction to Epistemology, a thinking process that I've applied before
but did not know had a formal name:

> Really important point (from Sir Karl Popper)

A belief isn't warranted unless you could have known if it's not true.

(1) Your guesses and opinions have to be testable.

(2) It's your job to test your opinions against evidence.

You should always be looking for evidence that your current beliefs are not
correct.

> A student who is only good at one subject is often someone who has only one
> learning strategy.

"Ask HN: What are your (non-hn-related) hobbies?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862139>

------
thorax
I use the _carefully/comically pronounce words_ trick for better spelling, it
really does help.

For example, to remember the spelling of Wednesday, I have always pronounced
it in my head as "Wedness day".

~~~
swombat
Having learned English as a second language, I actually pronounced it "Wedness
day" for some time before finding out how it was supposed to be pronounced...
I think. That was a while ago.

Perhaps that's why many foreigners write much better English than natives:
they don't get to find out the pronunciation before they see the word in
writing.

------
anonymousDan
I find his views on learning from text books vs reading literature
interesting. The problem I have with this self directed kind of learning is
that sooner or later I always get stuck and have no one to ask questions to.
For example, I'm currently going through this book on neural networks that
someone posted last week (<http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/rojas/neural/>).
However, when I get to the exercises at the end of the chapter, I inevitably
fail to complete some of them. Most of the time I don't even want the answer,
since that defeats the purpose, but some kind of hint to get me going in the
right direction would be really useful. It would be perfect if you could just
ask someone who knows the area. Anyone doing a lot of self directed learning
from text books with suggestions?

~~~
tgittos
I spend a lot of my free time doing self directed learning from text books and
frequently hit a wall where I don't know where to even begin.

Usually I recognise this as either an incomplete understanding of the topic,
or a representation of the problem that I'm not familiar with.

When this happens, I usually make a note of the question or topic, and
specific questions I have that are preventing me from understanding the
problem, and I seek out different sources of similar knowledge. I find
different authors present ideas and concepts in different ways, and sometimes
if a concept isn't clear in one text, it's clear in another.

In your specific example, I'd recommend seeking another book or article on
neural networks and skim it until you find information on the concept you're
stuck with, and see if it can add any pieces to the puzzle. If that fails,
sometimes just forgetting about it and proceeding will unlock understanding at
random later on, usually in the shower in my case.

------
crucini
> If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too!

I was in a meeting at VeryBigCompany where someone presented a PRD for review.
A large Word document, projected. In theory this is a high leverage document;
getting things right would make life easier downstream.

I noticed a few spelling errors, and gently pointed them out. I was ignored.
Unwisely, no doubt, I sharpened my voice a bit and repeated the comment. The
author recorded my comment with the air of someone humoring a small child.

Next I noticed grammatical errors. Some sentences had two plausible meanings;
some had none.

To the other participants, the important thing was that the PRD touched on the
key concepts. My focus on minutiae was inappropriate.

But to me, the flaws in expression signified flaws in thinking. I think
Covington was right in this case, and the thoughts were nonsense too.

~~~
swombat
I used to think like you, until I started working with some brilliant people
who can't spell, or produce grammatically correct writing, to save their life.
Be careful with that indicator... it's far from a surefire signal.

~~~
tedunangst
Even brilliant people can use a spell checker. And if you are presenting at
any sort of formal meeting, wouldn't it be a good idea to show your
presentation to someone before the main event?

The fact that you can't spell doesn't mean you're stupid. The fact that you
are unable to find a way to correct your spelling does.

~~~
swombat
Spell checkers don't help with this level of poor language. And these people
do use me as an editor when doing presentations and the like. But I get to see
the full gory disaster that is their initial version, and what I'm saying is,
I've learned not to discount their intelligence based on that.

------
derefr
I enjoyed this overall, but I just want to point out that he didn't really
make an argument against moral relativism, just said "practically, that's
dumb." Most moral relativists [that I know] aren't so concerned with
practice—they're instead trying to explicate that human sentient culture is
just one possible variety of sentience in the universe. For example: if we
could make exact copies of ourselves (incl. knowledge et all), would that be a
good idea? Well, we have one moral viewpoint; the people we will be when we
need to answer that question, though, will have _different_ cultural
biases—that is to say, _context_ —than us. The universe has as many
definitions of "good" or "bad" within it as there are ways to compose a
utility function.

------
rauljara
"Because the world is objectively real, of course some things are better than
others, by any reasonable criteria."

Given a set of criteria with objective measures, one can objectively tell if
something meets those criteria, or not, or whether it meets more of those
criteria, or not. But words like better and good express emotional value
judgements. It is, as far as I can tell, impossible to prove that my criteria
for what makes something good is objectively better than yours.

E.g., I may think food A is better than food B because it is spicier. You may
may think food A is worse than food B for the very same reason. How do you
determine whose version of better really is?

------
russell
Does anyone have a good tool for jotting down ideas and rearranging them? I
find that word processors are not very good for this, because they are more
concerned with formatting than manipulating units of text. Simplicity is
paramount.

~~~
jefffoster
I like emacs org-mode. You can create a hierarchy very easy and shuffle items
about between the nodes.

~~~
omouse
However some things don't fit nicely into a hierarchy. Remember mode helps
with that I think

~~~
jsrn
how to integrate Remember mode with org-mode:

[http://orgmode.org/manual/Setting-up-Remember-for-
Org.html#S...](http://orgmode.org/manual/Setting-up-Remember-for-
Org.html#Setting-up-Remember-for-Org)

and: > However some things don't fit nicely into a hierarchy.

sometimes the hyperlink feature of org-mode helps with a non-tree-like
structure: <http://orgmode.org/manual/Hyperlinks.html#Hyperlinks>

------
swombat
I don't really understand why this got 100 points. It's a passably good
presentation, at least for the first half, but serving it out as a pdf was
silly (why not just upload it to slideshare if you must share it in slide
form?) and it really degenerated into randomness as it progressed.

It's alright, but not good enough to deserve top spot on HN for hours. Maybe
it's just a really slow news day for HN.

------
bmr
Very similar to Brian Garner's writings and his push to simplify legal
writing. He recommends four stages of writing:

Madman - put ideas on paper with no regard for formalities

Architect - organize ideas into a a rough outline

Carpenter - "build" according to the architect's specifications, still with
little regard for word choice or grammar

Judge - edit carefully for word choice, syntax, and grammar

------
chasingsparks
If you enjoyed this slideshow, see Pragmatic Thinking and Learning:
[http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-
and-...](http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning)

It yielded a productivity boon in some areas for me.

------
benhoyt
Very good. The 25->8 word exercise was a good little demo.

Though I smiled when I saw "if you can spell ... int main(int argc; char*
argv[]);" -- his first semicolon should be a comma in C. Also: the world is
(more or less) spherical, not round. :-)

------
bcl
For those who are unaware of who he is, here is his blog -
<http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog>

------
teeja
"At most, an educated person needs help with only a few small points of
grammar."

Especially the difference between lie, lay, laid, lied, lain, layed, and lying
!!

------
mark_l_watson
That is good! I like the bit about unselfish writing. I tr to do that but
can't always pull it off.

------
Flow
Anyone got a mind-map version? :)

------
idlewords
How to Self-Undermine Effectively:

* Link to an oversize PDF of your PowerPoint presentation

* Present idea salad in bullet point format

* Use italics and bold to give your argument "turbo boost"

Actual quote: "Instead of doing what’s easy for you, do what’s easy for your
reader."

~~~
ScottWhigham
I know you think you are being clever but you aren't. It was a well written
PowerPoint that was saved as a PDF. So what?

I get so sick of some of the posts on HN by people who seemingly live to save
something negative about _anything_.

------
lucifer
'How to express your thoughts clearly' is the more honest title for his
presentation.

