Can you clarify what is confusing about the quote that you reference above?
It seems pretty well formed and makes it's point succinctly and with a reasonable metaphor.
It seems pretty well formed and makes it's point succinctly and with a reasonable metaphor.
Really? I can think of plain english way to describe (if I understood it correctly) the sentiment in less words and far less cognitive load.
Personally I feel repelled towards this in the same way as code golf, except it's also long, so perhaps worse.
I don't think the goal of any serious writing is to do it in as few words as possible. Instead, the goal is to write it with the right number of words. Taking a complicated idea and distilling it down to concrete bullet points loses all of the subtleties of the meaning, destroys the pace, and any of the poetry as well.
What you're left with is something like https://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm
Even if that's true, it's irrelevant. They were responding to the claim that ithis particular piece was written succinctly, which it manifestly was not.
(That's also a misuse of the word "sophistry", by the way.)
I don't want to abuse analogies, but let's say that you get asked the question, "Why don't you write a computer program that detects when another program hangs, and then restarts the program?" If I'm just going to give an off-hand answer, I'll say that this is connected to a famous problem in computer science, and it's proven to be impossible to solve. If I really want to explain why it's not possible without hand-waving it, I'm going to have to explain concepts like computability, models of computation, and "code as data".
But it's natural to encounter people with these questions.
Philosophy is the same way. It's easy to come up philosophical questions and hard to come up with answers.
If you're writing an article, in either philosophy or computer programming, you're going to have to be careful to ride right line between simplicity and complexity. Too simple, and what you're saying is incorrect. Too complicated, and nobody will understand you.