[ExI] Objective standards?

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sep 30, 2015 1:56 PM, "Dan TheBookMan" <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would you want reviewers of evolutionary biology texts to review based on
whether the text will sell, especially amongst an audience who disagrees
with evolutionary theory?

While this is a different topic - books on music rarely have as much
problem with public acceptance of truth - it is a factor how well texts
present their message.  Given one book that presents evolution in a dry,
academic manner and another full of fun stories - but both presenting the
same core content, and both not misrepresenting anything - which one will
sell better?

Now, you might associate fun stories only with religious anti-evolutionary
texts, but that is because those are the only ones that get much traction.
A given text in a field sells based on truth as well as accessibility.  An
anti-ev text that is difficult to read will get practically no readers, so
you will experience few to no examples of such.  A difficult pro-ev and an
easy anti-ev text might each get some readers, enough that you will at
least hear of some of each.  But what about an easy pro-ev text?

(But difficult pro-ev is enough to get some sales, thus many who write
pro-ev don't bother to make easy pro-ev.  Writing so that most people can
easily understand a complex subject is hard.  Though, I wonder what might
happen once we have a limited-Turing-test-passing chatbot, that can respond
well enough so long as the subject is kept to pre-grad-school level
biology, in software that can easily run millions of instances at once like
most chatbots?)
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