This is why my writing looks like word salad to you:
1) It’s much closer to mathematics and programmatic logic than it is to ordinary english. In fact it’s ‘a formal operational logic’ meaning a lot like programming.
2) All technical fields prevent ambiguity and confusion by using terms specific to the context. (again, my work is much closer to programmatic logic) In effect instead of analogies, technical fields use terms as the equivalent of names or measurements.
3) There is a presumption among ordinary people that ethical, moral, and legal language should be composed in ordinary language – despite that ordinary language is ambiguous, loaded, framed, and full of ignorance, error, bias and deceit.
So, if instead, I wrote everything in algorithmic prose using legal document structure, then you would not assume that you would understand it.
Can you read the law? Can you read software programs? Do you understand the foundations of mathematics? Of language and grammar? Of cognitive science? Of Economics? Of course you don’t. But do you criticize them for their ‘word salad’? Yet, I use concepts from all those fields and many others.
But because enough people DO understand my work (our work at the institute since it’s more than just me), and because I don’t want to ‘scare people off’ by using math, formal logic, or formal operational logic (programming), I write as I do, and people either stick around to learn or they don’t.
This strategy serves as a filtering system to keep away people who lack the capacity (and degrade the conversation) and encourages those that do (that improves the conversation).
I’ve been a public intellectual for over a decade now, and the ‘word salad’ accusation is the equivalent of claiming calculus is false because it’s hard’. Yes my work is hard. It takes work to understand.
So does every other scientific discipline. ‘)
-Hugs
