: Re: How to know you are over-explaining and oversimplifying a subject? Recently, I started writing articles about different subjects I learn on my own (programming, logic ...etc). While writing, I

@Phylliss352

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Are you over-explaining? No.

The rule of thumb in explaining something technical is to assume your reader is intelligent, but lacks expertise in your subject. Such a reader probably needs an example of something fitting a definition, and (as per your excerpt) only one example. Sir Gilbert Ryle had an unfortunate habit of giving 3-5 examples of most of his points, at least in The Concept of Mind. There's one context you may need to discuss more than one application of the idea: if you know people tend to erroneously think X is an example of Y, highlight that and explain why it isn't.

Another general point about explanation, not necessarily applicable here:

Stephen Pinker's The Sense of Style defends classic style for this purpose. Classic style tries to orient a reader's perspective so they can "see" that which they're asked to reason about. Pinker calls such an approach "congenial to the worldview of the scientist"; good exposition is symptomatic of good understanding. He quotes examples of authors, such as Richard Dawkins and Brian Greene, who use this to address an intelligent but inexpert reader when explaining scientific concepts. I'm not saying you should read the whole book, but classic style is worth learning about, if only to give you some ideas.

Are you over-simplifying? Yes.

One other idea I think would help with the case at hand is to make sure you spell out your points well enough you can't be accused of misunderstanding something you haven't. If you can flesh out what you know that well, your reader's less likely to get confused. Essentially, the point you're making in the above excerpt is that a concise deductive argument's premises may have inductive justifications separate from that deductive argument. It'd be all too easy to misread you as implying this threatens the classification of arguments themselves. Plus you haven't mentioned other kinds of reasoning (e.g. abductive), which may give the false impression there aren't any.

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