Here’s something I believe: You should be trying really hard to write your LessWrong posts in such a way that normal people can read them.
By normal, I mean “people who are not immersed in LessWrong culture or jargon.” This is most people. I get that you have to use jargon sometimes. (Technical AI safety people: I do not understand your math, but keep up the good fight.) Or if your post is referring to another post, or is part of a series, then it doesn’t have to stand alone. (But maybe the series should stand alone?)
Obviously if you only want your post to be accessible to LWers, ignore this. But do you really want that?
If your post provides value to many people on LW, it will probably provide value to people off LW. And making it accessible suddenly means it can be linked and referred to in many other contexts.
Your post might be the first time someone new to the site sees particular terms.
Even if the jargon is decipherable or the piece doesn’t rely on the jargon, it still looks weird, and people don’t like reading things where they don’t know the words. It signals “this is not for me” and can make them feel dumb for not getting it.
(Listen, I was once in a conversation with a real live human being who dropped references to obscure classical literature every third sentence or so. This is the most irritating thing in the universe. Do not be that person.)
On a selfish level,
It enables the post to spread beyond the LW memeosphere, potentially bringing you honor and glory.
It helps you think and communicate better to translate useful ideas into and out of the original context they appear in.
If you’re not going to do this, you can at least: Link jargon to somewhere that explains it.
“people who are not immersed in LessWrong culture or jargon.”
This is me. A creature from another time and space. I read about a website about rationality and got excited about potentially finding a group of people who think rationally.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff here on LW but could be more accessible. More formatting for ease of scanning allows readers to start picking up the important points.
There’s a lot of unnecessary words used—I wonder how much editing (pruning?) is done. The habit of giving something a few days to settle then re-reading it before publishing?
New perspectives would be useful for a lot of questions/discussions that I see here.
(1) Developing rationality@LW as it’s own paradigma by reusing other concepts from LessWrong.
No field of science can stand on it’s own without creating it’s own terms and seeing how those terms interact with another.
(2) Defensibly against being able to be quoted in a bad way.
Charles Murray succeeded in writing “The Bell Curve” in a way, where almost nobody who criticizes the book quotes it because he took care with all the sentence to write nothing that can easily taken out of context. Given the amount of criticism the book got that’s a quite impressive feat.
Unfortunately, in many controversial topics it’s helpful to write as defensibly or even Straussian.
Depending on the goal of a particular post (1) or (2) sometimes matter and at other times it’s worthwhile to write for a wider audience.
I think there is a happy medium in between having zero jargon (and limiting yourself to the style of Simple English Wikipedia) and having so much jargon that your ideas are impenetrable to anyone without a Ph.D in the field.
I would also note that not all jargon is created equal. Sometimes a new word is necessary as shorthand to encapsulate a complex topic. However, before we create the word, we should know what the topic is, and have a short, clear definition for the topic. All too often, I see people creating words for topics where there isn’t a short, clear definition. I would argue that jargon created without a clear, shared, explicit definition hurts the ability to build complex ideas even more so than not having jargon at all. It is only because of this form of jargon that we need to have the practice of tabooing words.
And making it accessible suddenly means it can be linked and referred to in many other contexts. … It enables the post to spread beyond the LW memeosphere, potentially bringing you honor and glory.
There are often very, very good reasons not to want this, and indeed to want the very opposite of this. In fact, I think that the default should be to not want any given post to be linked, and to spread, far and wide.
If you’re not going to do this, you can at least: Link jargon to somewhere that explains it.
The most important one is: the further an idea spreads, the more likely it is to be misinterpreted and distorted, and discussed elsewhere in the misinterpreted/distorted form; and the more this happens, the more likely it will be that anyone discussing the idea here has, in their mind, a corrupted form of it (both because of contamination in the minds of Less Wrong commenters from the corrupted form of the idea they read/hear in discussions elsewhere, and because of immigration of people, into Less Wrong discussions, who have first heard relevant ideas elsewhere and have them in a corrupted form). This can, if common, be seriously damaging to our ability to handle any ideas of any subtlety or complexity over even short periods of time.
Another very important reason is the chilling effects on discussions here due to pressure from society-wide norms. (Many obvious current examples, here; no need to enumerate, I think.) This means that the more widely we can expect any given post or discussion to spread, the less we are able to discuss ideas even slightly outside the Overton window. (The higher shock levels become entirely out of reach, for example.)
Finally, commonplace wide dissemination of discussions here are a strong disincentive for commenters here to use their real names (due to not wanting to be exposed so widely), to speak plainly and honestly about their views on many things, and—in the case of many commenters—to participate entirely.
It feels quite suboptimal to have a public forum that’s indexed on google, and at the same time be trying to deliberately keep the riffraff out by being obtuse.
If you want to not worry about what people will think, while being able to use your full name, you should use a private forum. Not understanding what Moloch means won’t stop an employer from not hiring you for considering heterdox views.
On a public forum, where anyone could stumble on a link from google, I think eukaryote’s thoughts are quite important.
Or, to be more precise, I agree denotationally but object connotationally: indeed, the thing I want is a different thing than what Less Wrong is, but it’s not clear to me that it’s a different thing than what Less Wrong easily could be.
To take a simple example of an axis of variation: it is entirely possible to have a public forum which is not indexed by Google.
A more complicated example: there is a difference between obtuseness and lack of deliberate, positive effort to minimize inferential distance to outsiders. I do not advocate the former… but whether to endorse the latter is a trickier question (not least because interpreting the latter is a tricky matter on its own).
I think I agree with mr-hire that this doesn’t seem right to me. The site is already public and will turn up when people search your name—or your blog name, in my case—or the idea you’re trying to explain.
I don’t especially care whether people use their real names or pseudonyms here. If people feel uncomfortable making their work more accessible under their real names, they can use a pseudonym. I suppose there’s a perceived difference in professionalism or skin in the game (am I characterizing the motive correctly?), but we’re all here for the ideas anyways, right?
The “real name” issue is only one part of one of the points I made. Even if you reject that part entirely, what do you say to the rest?
I suppose there’s a perceived difference in professionalism or skin in the game (am I characterizing the motive correctly?), but we’re all here for the ideas anyways, right?
This is not a realistic view, but, again, I am content to let it slide. By no means is it the whole or even most of the reasons for my view.
Differentiation could also be used to enable a more organized effort to make material more reachable to a wider audience. (Like wikipedia versus simple wikipedia.)
Here’s something I believe: You should be trying really hard to write your LessWrong posts in such a way that normal people can read them.
By normal, I mean “people who are not immersed in LessWrong culture or jargon.” This is most people. I get that you have to use jargon sometimes. (Technical AI safety people: I do not understand your math, but keep up the good fight.) Or if your post is referring to another post, or is part of a series, then it doesn’t have to stand alone. (But maybe the series should stand alone?)
Obviously if you only want your post to be accessible to LWers, ignore this. But do you really want that?
If your post provides value to many people on LW, it will probably provide value to people off LW. And making it accessible suddenly means it can be linked and referred to in many other contexts.
Your post might be the first time someone new to the site sees particular terms.
Even if the jargon is decipherable or the piece doesn’t rely on the jargon, it still looks weird, and people don’t like reading things where they don’t know the words. It signals “this is not for me” and can make them feel dumb for not getting it.
(Listen, I was once in a conversation with a real live human being who dropped references to obscure classical literature every third sentence or so. This is the most irritating thing in the universe. Do not be that person.)
On a selfish level,
It enables the post to spread beyond the LW memeosphere, potentially bringing you honor and glory.
It helps you think and communicate better to translate useful ideas into and out of the original context they appear in.
If you’re not going to do this, you can at least: Link jargon to somewhere that explains it.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Thanks for writing this.
This is me. A creature from another time and space. I read about a website about rationality and got excited about potentially finding a group of people who think rationally.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff here on LW but could be more accessible. More formatting for ease of scanning allows readers to start picking up the important points.
There’s a lot of unnecessary words used—I wonder how much editing (pruning?) is done. The habit of giving something a few days to settle then re-reading it before publishing?
New perspectives would be useful for a lot of questions/discussions that I see here.
There are two reasons for jargon.
(1) Developing rationality@LW as it’s own paradigma by reusing other concepts from LessWrong.
No field of science can stand on it’s own without creating it’s own terms and seeing how those terms interact with another.
(2) Defensibly against being able to be quoted in a bad way.
Charles Murray succeeded in writing “The Bell Curve” in a way, where almost nobody who criticizes the book quotes it because he took care with all the sentence to write nothing that can easily taken out of context. Given the amount of criticism the book got that’s a quite impressive feat.
Unfortunately, in many controversial topics it’s helpful to write as defensibly or even Straussian.
Depending on the goal of a particular post (1) or (2) sometimes matter and at other times it’s worthwhile to write for a wider audience.
One problem is that completely avoiding jargon limits your ability to build up to more complex ideas
I think there is a happy medium in between having zero jargon (and limiting yourself to the style of Simple English Wikipedia) and having so much jargon that your ideas are impenetrable to anyone without a Ph.D in the field.
I would also note that not all jargon is created equal. Sometimes a new word is necessary as shorthand to encapsulate a complex topic. However, before we create the word, we should know what the topic is, and have a short, clear definition for the topic. All too often, I see people creating words for topics where there isn’t a short, clear definition. I would argue that jargon created without a clear, shared, explicit definition hurts the ability to build complex ideas even more so than not having jargon at all. It is only because of this form of jargon that we need to have the practice of tabooing words.
Category Theory Without The Baggage seems relevant.
Yeah, building on more complex ideas—that you really need to read something else to understand—seems like a fine reason to use jargon.
There are often very, very good reasons not to want this, and indeed to want the very opposite of this. In fact, I think that the default should be to not want any given post to be linked, and to spread, far and wide.
I do wholeheartedly endorse this, however.
Say more?
Several reasons.
The most important one is: the further an idea spreads, the more likely it is to be misinterpreted and distorted, and discussed elsewhere in the misinterpreted/distorted form; and the more this happens, the more likely it will be that anyone discussing the idea here has, in their mind, a corrupted form of it (both because of contamination in the minds of Less Wrong commenters from the corrupted form of the idea they read/hear in discussions elsewhere, and because of immigration of people, into Less Wrong discussions, who have first heard relevant ideas elsewhere and have them in a corrupted form). This can, if common, be seriously damaging to our ability to handle any ideas of any subtlety or complexity over even short periods of time.
Another very important reason is the chilling effects on discussions here due to pressure from society-wide norms. (Many obvious current examples, here; no need to enumerate, I think.) This means that the more widely we can expect any given post or discussion to spread, the less we are able to discuss ideas even slightly outside the Overton window. (The higher shock levels become entirely out of reach, for example.)
Finally, commonplace wide dissemination of discussions here are a strong disincentive for commenters here to use their real names (due to not wanting to be exposed so widely), to speak plainly and honestly about their views on many things, and—in the case of many commenters—to participate entirely.
It feels quite suboptimal to have a public forum that’s indexed on google, and at the same time be trying to deliberately keep the riffraff out by being obtuse.
If you want to not worry about what people will think, while being able to use your full name, you should use a private forum. Not understanding what Moloch means won’t stop an employer from not hiring you for considering heterdox views.
On a public forum, where anyone could stumble on a link from google, I think eukaryote’s thoughts are quite important.
I didn’t advocate being obtuse. I only said that by default, we probably do not (and/or ought not) want a post to be disseminated widely.
What is the best way of accomplishing this, is a separate matter.
My point was that if that’s a thing you want, you probably do not want a public site like LW. The thing you want is a different thing than what LW is.
I don’t think I agree.
Or, to be more precise, I agree denotationally but object connotationally: indeed, the thing I want is a different thing than what Less Wrong is, but it’s not clear to me that it’s a different thing than what Less Wrong easily could be.
To take a simple example of an axis of variation: it is entirely possible to have a public forum which is not indexed by Google.
A more complicated example: there is a difference between obtuseness and lack of deliberate, positive effort to minimize inferential distance to outsiders. I do not advocate the former… but whether to endorse the latter is a trickier question (not least because interpreting the latter is a tricky matter on its own).
I think I agree with mr-hire that this doesn’t seem right to me. The site is already public and will turn up when people search your name—or your blog name, in my case—or the idea you’re trying to explain.
I don’t especially care whether people use their real names or pseudonyms here. If people feel uncomfortable making their work more accessible under their real names, they can use a pseudonym. I suppose there’s a perceived difference in professionalism or skin in the game (am I characterizing the motive correctly?), but we’re all here for the ideas anyways, right?
The “real name” issue is only one part of one of the points I made. Even if you reject that part entirely, what do you say to the rest?
This is not a realistic view, but, again, I am content to let it slide. By no means is it the whole or even most of the reasons for my view.
Interesting to see the differences in thoughts about purpose of LW and what users want.
Is there a need for the differentiation between posts that are looking for a wide audience and those that want to remain contained to a small group?
Differentiation could also be used to enable a more organized effort to make material more reachable to a wider audience. (Like wikipedia versus simple wikipedia.)