I don’t know if it was in the comments of here or an SSC post, but when talking about the rationalist diaspora and where the community goes from here, Scott has said he would welcome blog posts from guest authors, and mentioned several people he’d be willing to have on the site, or had already invited to make a guest post. Naturally, the guest authors he mentioned were already once-prominent LW bloggers—I forget who he mentioned besides Eliezer, who declined, but there were almost a dozen others. Scott’s writing is so impressive I wouldn’t be surprised if even some of his close friends, our friends, who hundreds of us think are often writers just as good or sometimes better than Scott, are personally too intimidated to post on SSC.
Well, that’s one hypothesis. Sometimes posts are so top-notch on SSC guest authors might feel they’re not up to snuff. Another hypothesis is that, for prominent authors, LW was a forum which exhausted all the low-hanging fruit, and wasn’t receptive to juicier, edgier, topics, like the culture and politics Scott writes about. However, with that level of exposure on a personal blog, writing on more controversial topics, earns a lot more scrutiny. SSC isn’t without its share of contentious posts. Maybe all that politicking, having the patience to grit your teeth and exercise the principle of charity in the face of hundreds of commentators, is a skill Scott has that’s harder for the rest of us to hack. Maybe other diaspora authors know this, and don’t think they can thrust themselves into the spotlight without getting burned out.
I think if the LW/rationalist community made an effort to publicly laud the authors of various blogs we like, they’d feel like it’s more worth the effort if respected readers want more. I don’t know if that’ll work. However, I know that if there was a thread were dozens of people were commenting that they liked my blog, even though they usually didn’t speak up about it, and that each of those comments had dozens of upvotes or whatnot, I’d be more inclined to write.
I’m aware Ozy Frantz had one or two guest posts on SSC as well, and that sometimes they and Scott had a dynamic where they were sometimes responding to posts on each others’ blogs, and that was interesting. AFAIK, that was mostly while they were dating. I don’t know what the status of Ozy ever being a guest author on SSC, or not, is.
I don’t know if it was in the comments of here or an SSC post, but when talking about the rationalist diaspora and where the community goes from here, Scott has said he would welcome blog posts from guest authors, and mentioned several people he’d be willing to have on the site, or had already invited to make a guest post. Naturally, the guest authors he mentioned were already once-prominent LW bloggers—I forget who he mentioned besides Eliezer, who declined, but there were almost a dozen others. Scott’s writing is so impressive I wouldn’t be surprised if even some of his close friends, our friends, who hundreds of us think are often writers just as good or sometimes better than Scott, are personally too intimidated to post on SSC.
Well, that’s one hypothesis. Sometimes posts are so top-notch on SSC guest authors might feel they’re not up to snuff. Another hypothesis is that, for prominent authors, LW was a forum which exhausted all the low-hanging fruit, and wasn’t receptive to juicier, edgier, topics, like the culture and politics Scott writes about. However, with that level of exposure on a personal blog, writing on more controversial topics, earns a lot more scrutiny. SSC isn’t without its share of contentious posts. Maybe all that politicking, having the patience to grit your teeth and exercise the principle of charity in the face of hundreds of commentators, is a skill Scott has that’s harder for the rest of us to hack. Maybe other diaspora authors know this, and don’t think they can thrust themselves into the spotlight without getting burned out.
I think if the LW/rationalist community made an effort to publicly laud the authors of various blogs we like, they’d feel like it’s more worth the effort if respected readers want more. I don’t know if that’ll work. However, I know that if there was a thread were dozens of people were commenting that they liked my blog, even though they usually didn’t speak up about it, and that each of those comments had dozens of upvotes or whatnot, I’d be more inclined to write.
I’m aware Ozy Frantz had one or two guest posts on SSC as well, and that sometimes they and Scott had a dynamic where they were sometimes responding to posts on each others’ blogs, and that was interesting. AFAIK, that was mostly while they were dating. I don’t know what the status of Ozy ever being a guest author on SSC, or not, is.