What’s the Cost of Being Easy to Understand?
What’s the Cost of Being Easy to Understand? Every clear explanation leaves something out. The challenge is deciding whether what disappeared was merely detail or part of the truth someone needed. Communication requires compression. We remove background, replace specialized terminology, choose examples, ignore some exceptions, and decide which complications can wait. Without those choices, explanations would become unusable. The problem begins when the omitted information could change what someone believes, decides, or does. Understanding Requires Compression Imagine someone asks whether they should eat at a particular restaurant. You reply: “It’s an excellent neighborhood Italian place, but it’s expensive.” That single sentence leaves out the menu, chef, ingredients, service, noise level, wine list, portion size, décor, neighborhood, reservation difficulty, and dozens of other details. Most of those omissions make the answer better. The person did not ask for a complete desc...