Essays shouldn't be built on a foundation of poor analogies
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Many essays are basically collections of poorly connected analogies and the ideas they are trying to express are most of the time piggybacking on the analogies, but they don't the ideas don't work out on their own without the analogies.
Text is like code. If I rename all the names it needs to continue compiling.
We can have a browser plugin that allows you to highlight words and expressions and show you substitutions, either synonyms from a dictionary or random invented words (e.g. replace capitalism with "sblorg").
It can also highlight similar words (e.g. using a thesaurus as a reference) showing what parts of the essay are connecting the ideas.
This would be useful to Replace the Symbol with the Substance and see if it wasn't just an illusion after all.
From my "review" of A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse.
I read part of that "a bridge to meta-rationality".
Usually I don't value essays very much. IME they are a set of ill-defined and ill-linked ideas, but which seem to be well related because they already fit into a pre-existing megaideology. However, this one is usually poorly constructed as well.
It starts with "the kegan theory" that I read about a little while ago and found it kind of "self help". Then he associates the levels with a vague concept of rationality without defining how it works, then he goes on a tangent about depression and how it is "philosophical" because the person gets "stuck" at the "4.5" level without understanding the "true truth of the level 5 ".
At that time I started to replace the terms with random words and they lose their connection, because in the text nothing sustains the relationships. It is a collection of analogies.
Then the absence of references and quotes made me give up.
It seems to me that there should be a series of essays, each well grounded and with references, to be able to build the whole.
I always treat text as enemy propaganda, each new statement has to pay me to be accepted.