This is one of the things about the novels he describes too, and their impact on empathy. Like, you can explain to someone in 3-4 sentences that slavery is cruel but that's not the same as inhabiting a characters circumstances for 500 pages.

It's a natural instinct for engineers, to think you should always convey information in the most efficient way possible, but it's actually not how real understanding tends to occur in the real world. You need a lot of noisy carrier signal and time and context etc.