I respect that criticism, but implications long=bad prompt rants on people wanting complexity and nuance dumbed down to soundbites. Coming from people smart enough to know better it is especially annoying. If a post demands too much time someone wants to invest elsewhere, fine, but taking that time out from Tolstoy or Gibbon to say a few hundred characters is just inherently too long to read is ridiculous.
Maybe it's fairer to say that it's too long to read for what they feel they'd get out of it. I think that's an important distinction. There are some people who are what you're complaining about, no doubt about it, but there are also people who feel that the opinion of a relatively random person on the Internet is only worth so much of their time and effort. Doubly so when it comes to a point-by-point debate of that opinion.
It is also fair to say that reading text on a monitor is harder on the eyes than reading text on a page, though how much that contributes to the Internet's relative brevity I can't guess.
TL;DR summary: shit be exhausting, yo.
I was with you till the last part, but "exhausting" is just not applicable to a few hundred words confronting someone who regularly reads a few hundred pages per day. If, to borrow one of Jordans favorite phrases, someone feels the candle not worth the wick, that is reasonable. It is the suggestion thick tomes are well within their capacity but my posts too verbose for them to process that bothers me, particularly when they know the issue is too complex for an *NM* to adequately address.
I think we're looking at not how large of a "tome," but how many times one is willing to read the same page. And/or how much effort to spend deciphering oddball tangents, metaphors, etc.
Anybody here ever studied the founding fathers of America?
- 30/08/2012 07:34:28 PM
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Slave-owning, mysoginist, wig-wearing members of the landed elite?
- 30/08/2012 07:51:33 PM
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No, never, not even briefly. 
- 30/08/2012 07:57:39 PM
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- 30/08/2012 07:57:39 PM
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What? Nooooo way
- 30/08/2012 08:06:30 PM
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- 30/08/2012 08:06:30 PM
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My US history class was an hour long and I always got distracted by a butterfly or something.
- 30/08/2012 08:50:39 PM
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Did you just kinda compare yourself to the founding fathers?
- 30/08/2012 08:08:40 PM
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- 30/08/2012 08:08:40 PM
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Not positively, but I have often thought they were a bad influence on me. 
- 30/08/2012 08:21:48 PM
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- 30/08/2012 08:21:48 PM
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Funny, my reaction to sentences like those is nearly the opposite.
- 30/08/2012 08:11:34 PM
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Fair point; it is revealing that none of the Bill of Rights amendments have multiple sections.
- 30/08/2012 08:39:24 PM
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You're projecting. *NM*
- 31/08/2012 12:48:12 AM
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I am aspiring.
- 31/08/2012 01:09:40 AM
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As a personal aside ...
- 31/08/2012 01:43:45 AM
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Like I say, maybe I invest too much in online posting.
- 31/08/2012 02:02:58 AM
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- 31/08/2012 02:02:58 AM
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Re:
- 31/08/2012 02:27:00 AM
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Re: Re:
- 31/08/2012 02:37:35 AM
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Well
- 31/08/2012 02:54:25 AM
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It does get repetitive too often.
- 31/08/2012 05:07:41 AM
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Doesn't really matter. You're gonna keep doing it. 
- 31/08/2012 05:16:23 AM
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- 31/08/2012 05:16:23 AM
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I did. They smelled of mahogany and death. They looked scabby and skeletal.
- 31/08/2012 12:35:44 AM
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Don't forget Hamilton! The creator of the American economy..... *NM*
- 31/08/2012 05:19:50 AM
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... and big government.
- 01/09/2012 01:54:20 PM
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I don't really buy that.....
- 01/09/2012 08:33:28 PM
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Hamilton loudly and often advocated a central bank, national debt and active federal government.
- 01/09/2012 08:41:50 PM
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I think the entire Age of Enlightenment is fascinating
- 31/08/2012 06:32:23 PM
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You realize you just made a great argument for intelligentsia rule, right?
- 01/09/2012 01:48:58 PM
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- 01/09/2012 01:48:58 PM
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I would want better intelligenstia first
- 01/09/2012 02:48:28 PM
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Ah, the old uneducated>miseducated argument.
- 01/09/2012 03:39:07 PM
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*wonders if we could test*
- 02/09/2012 02:45:10 PM
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no there is a better reason why it wouldn't work
- 02/09/2012 02:58:18 PM
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I listen to some of supposed intellectuals talk and I am unimpressed
- 02/09/2012 02:53:21 PM
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Being well read does not make one smart, but does facilitate it to a great degree.
- 02/09/2012 04:32:05 PM
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I like the Starship Trooper approach
- 02/09/2012 05:04:17 PM
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I run very hot and cold on that one.
- 02/09/2012 06:28:44 PM
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What was that again about "you have a right to your own opinion, not your own facts"?
- 03/09/2012 06:39:01 PM
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Ah, right; I had forgotten our previous discussion of conscriptions termination in the '90s and '00s
- 03/09/2012 06:48:28 PM
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If you worked with more engineers you might change your opinion on the science degree part
- 04/09/2012 03:00:16 PM
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Maybe; I would likely just conclude horse sense is uncommon everywhere, but less so in engineers.
- 05/09/2012 12:11:58 AM
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