Bullet-Style Writing and the Connection of Ideas

In Book 1, Part 1 of A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume explained the connection of ideas.

According to him, simple ideas are connected to other simple ideas by resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect in order to create complex ideas

Spinoza earlier had a similar idea, though linking the connection of ideas to God.

Hume’s explanation is far more detailed and organized than Spinoza.

We use his principle in creating a style of writing that complex ideas easier to understand. We first used this in 2012 to simplify the ideas of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments.

The main problem was that Smith wrote in very long sentences, trying to be artistic and poetic in the process. But this made his work difficult to understand.

So we simplified his sentences by cutting them up into simpler ones, and then putting them under the core idea in that long sentence.