One intuition that might be harder to capture with this decomposition of the problem is something like “when a frontpage post is in the bottom decile of frontpage posts with respect to how-likely-its-topic-is-to-encourage-careful-lucid-analysis, it should try to be in the top decile of frontpage posts with respect to how-likely-its-substance-and-style-is-to-encourage-careful-lucid-analysis”.
This is the kind of rule/guideline that’s almost impossible to enforce and might be harmful to regularly discuss, but it might get at some people’s intuition that there’s an “emotion budget” for frontpage posts, and if you make a frontpage post that’s unusually emotional-reaction-provoking on one dimension (e.g., it’s criticizing a particular group of people), it’s useful to try to make it unusually non-emotional-reaction-provoking on other dimensions (e.g., by being extra careful to avoid calls to action, forceful language, vivid/emotive examples, and informality/colloquialisms).
Hm. I intuitively view level of informality as more-or-less irrelevant to how much a post promotes careful lucid analysis. When I query my intuitions more closely, it suggests that formal writing may not promote careful analysis because it is dry and boring and people get tired of reading it, or because it is hard to understand; conversely, formal writing may be a strong signal that high epistemic standards are expected. Informal writing may be flippant about things others take seriously, causing them to react less usefully; on the other hand, informal writing may signal equality and make people feel more comfortable disagreeing.
Of course, sex jokes mostly serve the purpose of making the post more entertaining, and so “generally informal but no sex jokes because they make people uncomfortable” is a pretty reasonable norm which doesn’t in any way inhibit clear thinking. Forbidding curse words can make certain concepts harder to convey, but I think probably the right norm there is “when in doubt leave them out”.
actually, yeah, when you point it out like that—going back and looking at EY’s posts, they’re very informal language. kind of talking down at people, too, which signals a particular tribe, but very informal.
One intuition that might be harder to capture with this decomposition of the problem is something like “when a frontpage post is in the bottom decile of frontpage posts with respect to how-likely-its-topic-is-to-encourage-careful-lucid-analysis, it should try to be in the top decile of frontpage posts with respect to how-likely-its-substance-and-style-is-to-encourage-careful-lucid-analysis”.
This is the kind of rule/guideline that’s almost impossible to enforce and might be harmful to regularly discuss, but it might get at some people’s intuition that there’s an “emotion budget” for frontpage posts, and if you make a frontpage post that’s unusually emotional-reaction-provoking on one dimension (e.g., it’s criticizing a particular group of people), it’s useful to try to make it unusually non-emotional-reaction-provoking on other dimensions (e.g., by being extra careful to avoid calls to action, forceful language, vivid/emotive examples, and informality/colloquialisms).
Hm. I intuitively view level of informality as more-or-less irrelevant to how much a post promotes careful lucid analysis. When I query my intuitions more closely, it suggests that formal writing may not promote careful analysis because it is dry and boring and people get tired of reading it, or because it is hard to understand; conversely, formal writing may be a strong signal that high epistemic standards are expected. Informal writing may be flippant about things others take seriously, causing them to react less usefully; on the other hand, informal writing may signal equality and make people feel more comfortable disagreeing.
Yeah, I agree with this. Rationality and the English Language talks some about ways that unnecessarily formal writing can inhibit clear thinking.
Of course, sex jokes mostly serve the purpose of making the post more entertaining, and so “generally informal but no sex jokes because they make people uncomfortable” is a pretty reasonable norm which doesn’t in any way inhibit clear thinking. Forbidding curse words can make certain concepts harder to convey, but I think probably the right norm there is “when in doubt leave them out”.
actually, yeah, when you point it out like that—going back and looking at EY’s posts, they’re very informal language. kind of talking down at people, too, which signals a particular tribe, but very informal.