Communication is fucking hard

Yeah, I'm swearing. This shit is important to me.

No links in this post because I just can't be bothered, to be honest. I write this stuff off the top of my head when I'm sufficiently motivated to do so - which also explains how infrequent the posts are. Get used to it.

I was driven to write this because of three things I read today:

• Outrage about Andrew Tate's latest Social Media post where he trotted out his usual tropes - the only reason I saw it was because of a 1000 word post on LinkedIn that was shouting about it.
• Rebuttals of rebuttals of Apples' "LLMs aren't what you think they are" paper, which I spent way too long deep diving into
• A bunch of poor comms which made me think of the principles of communication.

Communication is fucking hard.

There's no beating about the bush. Effective communication is fucking hard to do well. Some are masters at it, some are appalling. As long as you're writing for a specific audience, then you can largely get away with your point, but the minute that audience expands, you're going to be screwed.

Take AT for an example. He's a master at comms, even if what he says is absolutely horrible misogynistic garbage. He doesn't fuck around explaining his point - he makes it clear and easily decipherable, which is why he has a huge audience of deplorable manbabies who worship him even while he spews bile all over them.

The articles I see that decry his efforts are long, considered, thoughtful, argumentative pieces that surgically take his thinking, emotions, and actions apart, and are never as widely circulated. There is yet to be seen a person who takes the opposite viewpoint and can face him down toe to toe in a vocal battle. I, for one, cannot wait for that day. (The simple answer to everything he says: he's a twat and he's selling you something. That's my opinion).

The rebuttals of rebuttals of Apples' LLM paper were long and thoughtful and considered and articulate too - necessary because in practice the original paper is itself making a lot of arguments, albeit some good, and some expressed poorly. The main concept - I think is still present and valid, but dulled. The problem was the original engagement bait that attempted to summarise the whole thing in a series of simple tweets and often completely missed the point (but still got a huge audience), the rebuttals tried to take the same approach but were often frankly shite because they were trying to appeal to the same audience, and then the rebuttals of the rebuttals which were thoughtful, considered and read by a smaller audience.

If you're going to write something long and thoughtful, the only audience you will get is those who think like you and are prepared to invest the time to read your content, and the lunatics who will read the whole thing only to provide detailed responses that miss the point entirely.

If you want to capture attention, be short and to the point.

The Art of writing

Unless you're writing a novel, you're communicating a thought. Thoughts, by their nature, are simple and straightforward. It's only when they are placed in the hands of a poor writer that they get mangled and lengthened by a factor of ten.

Wriiting short and punchy stuff is bloody hard to do. Everything I write (with the exception of these posts - which I'm not paid to write) goes through multiple drafts and requires careful re-reading to make sure that it's good enough. If i'm not cutting or rewriting large portions of the content every time, then I'm not paying attention.

An aside on mission statements

I read a couple of those yesterday. If they don't look like buzzword bingo cards that have been completely filled in, celebrated over, and discarded, then they are usually good.

The point of a mission statement is to communicate why you are here and what you're doing. Your mission. If you can't articulate that in a single sentence, then you don't know why you're here. If you have multiple points that you want to get across, then go ahead and take as many single sentences as you like to explain your points.

The more sentences you have, the worse it gets.

The biggest mistake that people writing and reading mission statements make is the audience they are pitched at. If it's buzzword bingo, it's not for you, dear reader, the great unwashed. It's for the mucky mucks in the boardroom who nod sagely while they attempt to decipher how they can get what they want to do into the mission statement, or how they can make it vague enough that it becomes a tentpole for their (often unrelated) objective that bears as much relation to a mission as robbing children has to do with making the world a better place.

Make it short. Make it punch the reader in the face. If it doesn't, then it's shit and you need to do it again.

Unless you're writing for the C Suite, in which case you're getting paid by the word and managerial concept, and you should just go nuts with that shit. Fill your boots.

The relentless summary

I'm already way too long on this as it is. Here's my quick takeaway on how to write well - write something, read it out loud, correct it as much as you're able, and then publish it. If people still don't get the point you are trying to make, then:

• It's way too long: cut it in half, then in half again, and then write it in marker pen on an A4 sheet of paper.
• You don't get to the point: good writing signposts the way to the answer, that is if it doesn't punch the reader in the face with the point straight away, which is always better
• It's meaningless psychobabble: in which case throw it away and do it again with feeling, you talentless fuck.