Obfuscation

[brainio]

Intentional obfuscation happens all the time in politics, the media, history, law, science, medicine, programming, and so forth. Unintentional obfuscation via compliance probably happens equally as much or more. Both cases are covered in, Repeat a lie enough and it becomes the truth. Obfuscation is definitely a thing in education too. See for example:

https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/to-write-better-eschew-obfuscation

It’s why I believe one of the worst enemies of clear, understandable writing is higher education. You’d think that a college composition course (or a high school senior Honors English class) would produce people who can write more effectively and communicate their messages in more compelling ways. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.

Students are taught to use the academic style of writing. Very formal, built upon a certain structure, guided by hundreds of rules which cannot be violated, it’s the style that’s been the norm in the academic world for decades. The students are coached and chastised until they adopt the preferred style. Don’t use contractions. You simply cannot use the second person. And never start a sentence with a conjunction.

The students couple their fear of those rules with a desire to sound as smart as possible. So they write long, complex sentences studded with semicolons and choked with clauses. They wear out their thesauruses, desperately seeking four-syllable words they can use to express their two-syllable thoughts. (Yeah, you did it, too.) So instead of trying to present their newfound wisdom clearly and cogently, the students embrace obfuscation.

That wouldn’t be a problem post-graduation, except that the vast majority of these students leave school believing the academic style is the normal, compulsory way to write. It is normal and compulsory in the academic world … but nowhere else. And that makes sense, because once we’re out of school, we’re no longer writing to impress professors. We’re trying to communicate with co-workers, supervisors, prospects, clients, vendors, and other mere mortals.

My question is, how deep and wide does it go? How about more generally in education and information sources such as books, articles, videos? For sure much of what the author of that article goes on about happens in math, science, engineering, medicine, pharma, etc.

And something else that happens is obfuscation of obfuscation. If some party has gone to great depth in making lies into accepted truths, it is likely that party will also go to some effort in hiding that they did it.