Pedagogic posts are more accessible, and a large portion of the point of publishing on LW is to present technical ideas to a wide audience. While the audience here is intelligent, they also come from a wide variety of domains, so accessibility is key to successfully writing a good LW post (with some exceptions).
Do you have a proposition for how to increase skimability without sacrificing accessibility?
Maybe some, but I think that’s a bit besides the point… I agree there’s a genuine trade-off, but my post was mostly about AF. I’m mostly in LW/AF for AI Alignment content, and I think these posts should strive to be a bit closer to academic style.
A few quick thoughts: - include abstracts - say whether a post is meant to be pedagogic or not - say “you can skip this section if” - follow something more like the format of an academic paper - include a figure towards the top that should summarize the idea for someone with sufficient background with a caption like “a summary of [idea]: description / explanation”
I agree that AI alignment posts don’t need to aim for accessibility to the same degree as the typical LW post (this was what I was mainly referring to when I edited in “with some exceptions”), but you did name-check LW in your top-level post, and I don’t think it’s besides the point for the typical LW post.
I think your suggestions are good and reasonable suggestions.
Pedagogic posts are more accessible, and a large portion of the point of publishing on LW is to present technical ideas to a wide audience. While the audience here is intelligent, they also come from a wide variety of domains, so accessibility is key to successfully writing a good LW post (with some exceptions).
Do you have a proposition for how to increase skimability without sacrificing accessibility?
Maybe some, but I think that’s a bit besides the point…
I agree there’s a genuine trade-off, but my post was mostly about AF.
I’m mostly in LW/AF for AI Alignment content, and I think these posts should strive to be a bit closer to academic style.
A few quick thoughts:
- include abstracts
- say whether a post is meant to be pedagogic or not
- say “you can skip this section if”
- follow something more like the format of an academic paper
- include a figure towards the top that should summarize the idea for someone with sufficient background with a caption like “a summary of [idea]: description / explanation”
Sounds like a fair point. I’ll try to add that to my posts in the future. ;)
I agree that AI alignment posts don’t need to aim for accessibility to the same degree as the typical LW post (this was what I was mainly referring to when I edited in “with some exceptions”), but you did name-check LW in your top-level post, and I don’t think it’s besides the point for the typical LW post.
I think your suggestions are good and reasonable suggestions.