The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions

See also Incentive Super-response Tedency (ch. 18); Reciprocity (ch. 6); Social Loafing
(ch. 33)

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57
IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, SAY NOTHING
Twaddle Tendency
When asked why a fifth of Americans were unable to locate their country on a
world map, Miss Teen South Carolina, a high-school graduate, gave this answer
in front of rolling cameras: ‘I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to
do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and I
believe that our education like such as South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like
such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should
help the U.S., should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian
countries, so we will be able to build up our future.’ The video went viral.
Catastrophic, you agree, but you don’t waste too much time listening to beauty
queens. OK, how about the following sentence? ‘There is certainly no necessity
that this increasingly reflexive transmission of cultural traditions be associated
with subject-centred reason and future-oriented historical consciousness. To the
extent that we become aware of the intersubjective constitution of freedom, the
possessive-individualist illusion of autonomy as self-ownership disintegrates.’
Ring any bells? Top German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas in
Between
Facts and Norms
.
Both of these are manifestations of the same phenomenon, the 
twaddle
tendency.
Here, reams of words are used to disguise intellectual laziness,
stupidity, or underdeveloped ideas. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. For the
beauty queen, the smokescreen strategy failed spectacularly. For Habermas, it
might be working. The more eloquent the haze of words, the more easily we fall
for them. If used in conjunction with the 
authority bias
it can be especially
dangerous as we are willing to accept the words without questioning them.
I myself have fallen for the 
twaddle tendency
on many occasions. When I was
younger, French philosopher Jacques Derrida fascinated me. I devoured his
books, but even after intense reflection I still couldn’t understand much.
Subsequently his writings took on a mysterious aura, and the whole experience
drove me to write my dissertation on philosophy. In retrospect, both were tomes of
useless chatter – Derrida and my dissertation. In my ignorance, I had turned

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myself into a walking, talking smoke machine.
The 
twaddle tendency
is especially rife in sport. Breathless interviewers push
equally breathless football players to break down the components of the game,
when all they want to say is: ‘We lost the game – it’s really that simple.’ But the
presenter has to fill airtime somehow – and seemingly the best method is by
jabbering away and by compelling the athletes and coaches to join in. Jabber
disguises ignorance.
This phenomenon has also taken root in the academic spheres. The fewer
results a branch of science publishes, the more babble is necessary. Particularly
exposed are economists, which can be seen in their comments and economic
forecasts. The same is true for commerce on a smaller scale: the worse-off a
company is, the greater the talk of the CEO. The extra chatter extends to not just a
lot of talking, but to hyperactivity, also designed to mask the hardship. A laudable
exception is the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch. He once said in an
interview: ‘You would not believe how difficult it is to be simple and clear. People
are afraid that they may be seen as a simpleton. In reality, just the opposite is
true.’
In conclusion: verbal expression is the mirror of the mind. Clear thoughts
become clear statements, whereas ambiguous ideas transform into vacant
ramblings. The trouble is that, in many cases, we lack very lucid thoughts. The
world is complicated, and it takes a great deal of mental effort to understand even
one facet of the whole. Until you experience such an epiphany, it’s better to heed
Mark Twain: ‘If you have nothing to say, say nothing.’ Simplicity is the zenith of a
long, arduous journey, not the starting point.