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posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 2:38PM
Well, you can write/talk more concisely if you wrote in shorthand ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand ), but that's probably not what you meant. You can also write/talk more concisely if you carefully edit and refine and re-edit your work, before releasing it. But I don't think you were really referring to that either. I think the real problem of "inefficiency" is one people (not me, of course) deliberately introduce -- either to entertain themselves, or to hide ugly truths. |
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posted by dennisn on October 13th, 2010 at 6:31PM
I was referring to the deliberate inefficiencies/obfuscations of things like politicians, snake-oil salesmen, Shakespeare, soap-opera/sit-com writers, teen diaries, etc :).
Shorthand allows you to write anything that can be written with mathematical symbols, in just as concise and precise a format. You're confusing the form of an idea (it's "superficial"/aesthetic notation ... shorthand / longhand / math symbolized), with it's function. The form doesn't really matter -- I can use normal words, or short word-symbols (or math notation), to express a googolplex. The beauty isn't really the notation, it's the idea.
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