The factor of 2 is a multiplier on the number of readers. So the number of readers matters. I think there are more lurkers on LW than people realize. See e.g. this obscure poll of mine that got over 100 votes from logged in users. It wouldn’t surprise me if I am speaking to an audience of over 50 people while typing in to this comment box.
An advantage of public discourse is that we have good methods for connecting readers with the posts that are likely to be most impactful for them. They can look at post titles, have posts suggested by friends, etc. Finding high value conversations in real life is more haphazard: networking, parties, small talk, etc.
The best approach might be a hybrid, where you test your ideas on a conversational audience and publish them when you’ve refined them enough that they’re digestible for a mass audience.
The factor of 2 is in the limit of infinitely many readers.
I agree that content discovery is tough. Though note that the question is largely about finding topics, not necessarily conversation partners, and here we have better mechanisms (if I’m talking with someone I know, I can bring up the topics most likely to interest them). I think that connecting people is a hard problem we’re not great at, though the intuition that it looks hard is also tied up with a few of the other problems (talking from higher to lower values of time, compensating talkers).
The factor of 2 is a multiplier on the number of readers. So the number of readers matters. I think there are more lurkers on LW than people realize. See e.g. this obscure poll of mine that got over 100 votes from logged in users. It wouldn’t surprise me if I am speaking to an audience of over 50 people while typing in to this comment box.
An advantage of public discourse is that we have good methods for connecting readers with the posts that are likely to be most impactful for them. They can look at post titles, have posts suggested by friends, etc. Finding high value conversations in real life is more haphazard: networking, parties, small talk, etc.
The best approach might be a hybrid, where you test your ideas on a conversational audience and publish them when you’ve refined them enough that they’re digestible for a mass audience.
The factor of 2 is in the limit of infinitely many readers.
I agree that content discovery is tough. Though note that the question is largely about finding topics, not necessarily conversation partners, and here we have better mechanisms (if I’m talking with someone I know, I can bring up the topics most likely to interest them). I think that connecting people is a hard problem we’re not great at, though the intuition that it looks hard is also tied up with a few of the other problems (talking from higher to lower values of time, compensating talkers).