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/lit/ - Literature

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21009742 No.21009742 [Reply] [Original]

This quote applies just as much to storytelling as it does to explaining things. Complexity is for pseuds and cheap window dressing.

>> No.21009762

>>21009742
So does sucking my cock, what do you make of that OP?

>> No.21009768

>>21009742
Storytelling is not meant to explain. Its meant to entertain. Read a book faggot

>> No.21009771

>>21009742
This is just a cope for being too much of a midwit to understand any post written here and you know it anon

>> No.21009785

>>21009768
Art isn't entertainment.

>> No.21009916

>>21009742
Einstein couldn't explain any of his theories in a simple fashion at all, and people still can't explain them simply today.

>> No.21009952

>>21009768
>a wall of text is entertaining
I have never seen a sentiment (a shit one at that) describe this entire board so well in one post. Also you need to get better hobbies if you really think this.

>> No.21010095

Why the fuck did this thread get made again

>> No.21010593

>>21009916
"Space twists from an object having mass."
That's not very hard

>> No.21010680
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21010680

>>21009742
You are misinterpreting the quote. Things should be explained as their complexity requires. Oversimplification and overcomplexity are both not good. But I don't see how this should apply to storytelling. They're narratives, not science papers.

>> No.21010801

>>21009916
>Einstein couldn't explain any of his theories in a simple fashion at all, and people still can't explain them simply today.
Ask me how I know your a pseud.

>> No.21011055

>>21009742
>if you can't explain it simply, your language is beyond broken

>> No.21011419

>>21009768
spbp

>> No.21011996

>>21010680
This.

>> No.21012010

>>21009742
'complex' is just the same acceptable intellectual laziness as 'pretentious.' If you don't understand it, you didn't think about it hard enough. And if you dislike it, just say that's it's gay, and for faggots.

>> No.21012015

Flecktarn.

>> No.21012909

>>21009768
Entertainment is bad.

>> No.21013578

Bump

>> No.21014632

Bump

>> No.21014863

>>21010593
That's the statement of his theorem. People still can't explain why it's true in simple words. And neither could Einstein explain why it's true in simple words. If you actually believe that, then Einstein's theoretical papers would be accessible to a simpleton. They simply aren't.

>> No.21014922

>>21009742
Many novelists write novels instead of philosophy essays because they want to explore things that they don't understand. Nabokov says literature 'appeals to that secret depth of the soul where the shadows of other worlds pass like the shadows of nameless and soundless ships'. I think everyone has mysteriously important experiences like that, even if they're super elusive and fleeting, and it's those experiences you make contact with in stories, whose images and characters can never be reduced to something else. Even if you think you 'get the point' of a story, if it's a good book then you'll still return to certain scenes and certain moments long after you've read it, because there's something in them that isn't contained in 'the point'.

Adorno has a bit on this subject:
>There is no answer that would convince someone who would ask such questions as "Why imitate something?" or "Why tell a story as if it were true when obviously the facts are otherwise and it just distorts reality?" Artworks fall helplessly mute before the question "What's it for?" and before the reproach that they are actually pointless. . . . Those who peruse art solely with comprehension make it into something straightforward, which is furthest from what it is. If one seeks to get a closer look at a rainbow, it disappears.

>> No.21015051

>>21014922
Folks, I have read a lifetime of novels. It wasn't worth it. Poetry on the other hand, I regret nothing. But don't waste your time on anything after the death of Whitman. It's all downhill from there. Hell, Whitman jumped off that hill himself when he decided to republish an inferior version of Leaves of Grass. It was pretty much just a money grab to fund his gay sexual escapades.

>> No.21015255
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21015255

>>21009742
>started posting this in every Hegel thread
>it turned into a /lit/ meme

>> No.21017085

>>21012010
Sometimes things are shit and pretentious.

>> No.21017097

"Don't use unneeded big words or run-on sentences." summarizes what is taught in scientific and legal writing courses, but with storytelling that is not always appropriate.

>> No.21017104

>>21009785
Entertainment is one of its functions. Art which doesn’t entertain one’s attention is pitiful and self-indulgent on the part of the artist.

>> No.21017113

>>21017104
No, actually engagement is one of its functions. It doesn't need to entertain.

>> No.21017149

>>21009742
Wouldn't know the arrogance one must possess in order to claim all things to make up the human soul are easily put into text form. If you don't understand the difference between theoretical physics based around math and feelings and pyshological aspects of organisms then you may be beyond help.

>> No.21017352

>>21009742

You can't explain Einstein's relativity theory in a simple way. And when you do, It's not relativity theory anymore.

>> No.21017418

>>21009742
Okay but people have different comprehension levels so what might be simple to you will be complex for someone else. There are people who unironically think the tv cannot lie, and others who believe you can measure the intelligence of a nation based on how many nobel prize winners they have. and these folks have average intelligence

>> No.21017426

>>21009952
>gee, what board should I browse if I hate reading?
>hey how about the reading board!

>> No.21017613

>>21009742
he never said this, but he did say something along the lines of "one should explain things as simply as possible, but no simpler", which makes far more sense due to certain things being of irreducible complexity

>> No.21017666

>>21009742
That quote sucks, it's utter bullshit. Typical Jewish mental trap that indirectly destroys anything worth struggling for. Example? The nature of God.

>> No.21017675

>>21017666
>The nature of God.

That's the most simplistic thing ever. Even a cavemen could conceive of deities. If that quote is true then everyone understands the nature of god considering how easy it is to explain.

>> No.21017681

>>21017675
Two millennia of Christianism have revolved around that effort, and you post that post. You're retarded.

>> No.21017691

Why does this image trigger /lit/ so much? It's basically Shakespeare's "Brevity is the soul of whit" which basically proves Shakespeare understood this concept better than Einstein.

>> No.21017700

>>21017681
>Two millennia of Christianism have revolved around that effort, and you post that post

The core was established with the Judaistic tradition. Rest of it is politics on who controls the institutions.

>> No.21017723

>>21017691
Shakespeare has a pretentious retard say brevity is the soul of wit, that’s the entire joke.

>> No.21017724

>>21017691
I'll speak for myself. It doesn't trigger me, it's just not true. Language itself, as poetry demonstrates, is a struggle to express something you have clear inside of you, but that you can't put out simply.
When Einstein became famous, he started spewing out lots of rubbish sentences just to seem cool and >le original genius to the press. It was not different from how stars behave today when they go on television or tweet some retarded horseshit.

>> No.21017729

>>21017700
The Christian literature I refer to is not the Bible, but the more philosophical and mystical part of it, which begun with Augustine. So yeah, two millennia.

>> No.21017730

>>21017675
>>21017681
>>21017700
you guys are faggots

>> No.21017735

>>21017730
Yes I would definitely suck your dangling trunk

>> No.21017747

>>21017691
As a child the Einstein quote was simpler and easier to understand but now I appreciate the Shakespeare line more. Which is "simpler"? "Brevity" is not a part of a simple English vocabulary.

>> No.21017750

>>21017675
Behaviorally modern hunter gatherers (i.e. from 40,000 years ago onwards) were no more or less complex than us.

>> No.21017770

>>21017729
The implication being that Augustine's ideas can't be explained in simple language?

>>21017750
That is true. But they lacked the institutions or context to grasp complex knowledge that may require degrees of abstraction.

>> No.21017773

>>21017723
Really the joke was that Polonius as a character is very long winded.

>> No.21017785

>>21017770
Are you retarded? Seriously, until now, you didn't grasp that I was talking about the fact that the entirety of Christian literature, maybe except the Bible, disproves Einstein's quote exactly because it talks about something it can't "explain simply"?

>> No.21017828

>>21017785
Calm down esse. How am I supposed to know that you didn't mean the bare scriptural concept of God when you mentioned the "nature of god", but actually referring to the sophistry that followed

>> No.21017848

>>21017828
It's not sophistry, mystics have written hundred of pages of feelings and sensations after seeing God. Did they not understand It? Einstein was a clown.

>> No.21017871

>>21017848
Einstein says "if you can't explain it simply then you don't understand it well enough."

Taking the presumption that mystics can't explain their "feelings and sensations" , Einstein would conclude that they don't understand them. And I'm guessing here that you argue otherwise.

So did they understand their "feelings and sensations"? I mean they did experience it and no one can deny that since no one experienced what they did. But do they "understand" it? Considering what they ascribed those feelings to and what conclusions they draw from it, I would say no. And my own experience with real people says that they are mostly not great at understanding their feelings

>> No.21017872

>>21017848
>Did they not understand It?
They did not which is why it's all so difficult to describe or explain. You may have the best understanding of a phenomena out of anyone but still not understand much about it.

>> No.21017893

>>21017730
And you are a bot: change my mind

>> No.21017898

>>21017893
If Im a bot then you two dont suck dick on the regular. therefor Im not a bot. QED

>> No.21018060

>>21014863
>That's the statement of his theorem. People still can't explain why it's true in simple words. And neither could Einstein explain why it's true in simple words
That's because we don't know why and neither did he, that's how physics works at the fundamental level. Anything we know we can explain in simple words. His papers amount to "space twists in the presence of mass and this is why, in the context that we are working in". We don't have any why beyond that.

>> No.21018492

>>21017113
engagement = entertainment

>> No.21018495

>>21009742
this is the kind of logic that gave us pencil through bent sheet of paper wormhole explanations. Fuck off

>> No.21018627

>>21018492
No it does not

>> No.21018985

>>21017871
>>21017872
We have different understanding of what understanding means. In my opnion, mystics perfectly understand what they are experiencing, but words, and human ways of expression in general, are not enough for them to give an idea of what they experience. Dante constantly says, throughout all the Comedy, that human words are not enough to tell what he saw. That's why the Comedy is long as fuck, that's why a novel can be long as fuck. It's not just because of the plot, but rather because the richness and the complexity of the subject complicates and enriches the language, which goes around and around until the author thinks he has expressed a tiny little bit of what he knows. It's plain bullshit to assume the author doesn't understand his subject well enough; the fact that the language is not simple can be proof of the opposite, i.e. that he understands it WAY TOO well to spend just a few words on it. Einstein just used to talk out of his ass most of the time, let's be honest.

>> No.21019029

>>21010095
Because /lit/ has a hard on for Jewish trannies

>> No.21019042

>>21009742
Brainlet cope.

>> No.21019222

>>21009742
>gets btfo last time
>it applies to storytelling too!!!!!
COPE.

>> No.21019432

>>21019042
>>21017418
>>21017149
Not really no. That's basically what the greatest works of fiction are. Whether they do it with super simple babby shit like the 10 commandments, or they hit you over the head with it incessantly for hundreds of thousands of words like The Brothers Karamazov, the best works of fiction are very simple.

most people who say that "complex" works are good are usually, as you conveniently demonstrate in your unprompted display, insecure midwits who are easily baffled by things like computer generated postmodernist articles that looks and sound profound and complex and detailed but are actually just pure gibberish

the only time things need to be complex is when you're not telling a story but just laying out facts. if your story is complex, you're probably a really incompetent author. "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." If I had more talent, I would've written a less complex story.

>> No.21020352

Bump