"A clear argument has to lay out an inferential pathway, starting from what the audience already knows or accepts. If you don’t recurse far enough, you’re just talking to yourself."

"When I observe failures of explanation, I usually see the explainer taking one step back, when they need to take two or more steps back."

"Oh, and you’d better not drop any hints that you think you’re working a dozen inferential steps away from what the audience knows, or that you think you have special background knowledge not available to them. The audience doesn’t know anything about an evolutionary-psychological argument for a cognitive bias to underestimate inferential distances leading to traffic jams in communication. They’ll just think you’re condescending."

"Fleeting mental images, unspoken flinches, desires acted upon without acknowledgement—these account for as much of ourselves as words."