Hold my 🍺

But computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once wrote:

Simplicity is the hallmark of truth— we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give for an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated and leaves the lecture hall commenting to each other: “That was rather trivial, wasn’t it? The sore truth is that complexity sells better.

A tweet can be more insightful than a book, but people pay $20 for books and would never pay a cent for thousands of tweets. Charge a client for ten sentences of advice and they’ll leave in disgust. Give them a phone-book-size elaboration and they’ll pay you a fortune and refer their friends.

One is that length is often the only thing signaling effort and thoughtfulness. Consumers of information rarely try to dissect an argument objectively; that’s too hard. When reading they just try to figure out whether the author is credible or not. Does this sound right? Does it pass the smell test? Has the author put more than a few seconds of thought into this argument? Length and complexity are often the only indication that an argument was thoughtful vs. a random gut feeling

Sherlock Holmes put it: “What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”

Wherever information is exchanged – wherever there are products, companies, careers, politics, knowledge, education, and culture – you will find that the best story wins. Great ideas explained poorly can go nowhere while old or wrong ideas told compellingly can ignite a revolution. Morgan Freeman can narrate a grocery list and bring people to tears, while an inarticulate scientist might cure disease and go unnoticed.