One of the primary problems LessWrong is trying to solve (but can’t just be solved via technical solutions) is getting ideas out from inside the heads of people who think seriously about stuff (but tend to communicate only in high-context, high-trust environments), into the public sphere where people can benefit from it.
Obstacles to this include:
Being too busy
Feeling like it’d take too long to polish an entire into something worth posting
Ideas being too sensitive (i.e. based on secrets or pseudo secrets, or wanting to avoid attracting journalists, etc)
Not wanting to deal with commenters who don’t have the context.
“Ideas being too sensitive” may not have a good solution for public, permanent discourse, but “being too busy”, and the related “no time to polish it” both seem like things that could be solved if the less busy participant in a conversation takes the time to write it up. (This only works when the other things the less-busy person could do are less valuable than writing up the post)
A dynamic that Ben, Oli and I have been discussing and hoping to bring about more is separating out the “idea generating” and “writing” roles, since idea generation is a more scarce resource.
A side effect of this is that, since Critch is busy off founding new x-risk mitigation organizations, he probably won’t be able to clarify points that come up in the comments here, but I think it’s still more valuable to have the ideas out there. (Both for the object level value of those ideas, and to help shift norms such that this sort of thing happens more often)
I’d love to see more conversations being written up, especially as someone who is outside of the Bay Area and so who is probably missing out on many ideas that are in wide circulation there. I wonder if there are any Less Wrongers with journalism training who would take up this role.
This post was an experiment in “making it easier to write down conversations.”
One of the primary problems LessWrong is trying to solve (but can’t just be solved via technical solutions) is getting ideas out from inside the heads of people who think seriously about stuff (but tend to communicate only in high-context, high-trust environments), into the public sphere where people can benefit from it.
Obstacles to this include:
Being too busy
Feeling like it’d take too long to polish an entire into something worth posting
Ideas being too sensitive (i.e. based on secrets or pseudo secrets, or wanting to avoid attracting journalists, etc)
Not wanting to deal with commenters who don’t have the context.
“Ideas being too sensitive” may not have a good solution for public, permanent discourse, but “being too busy”, and the related “no time to polish it” both seem like things that could be solved if the less busy participant in a conversation takes the time to write it up. (This only works when the other things the less-busy person could do are less valuable than writing up the post)
A dynamic that Ben, Oli and I have been discussing and hoping to bring about more is separating out the “idea generating” and “writing” roles, since idea generation is a more scarce resource.
A side effect of this is that, since Critch is busy off founding new x-risk mitigation organizations, he probably won’t be able to clarify points that come up in the comments here, but I think it’s still more valuable to have the ideas out there. (Both for the object level value of those ideas, and to help shift norms such that this sort of thing happens more often)
I’d love to see more conversations being written up, especially as someone who is outside of the Bay Area and so who is probably missing out on many ideas that are in wide circulation there. I wonder if there are any Less Wrongers with journalism training who would take up this role.
Future Perfect is sorta this, but probably too mainstream / high-powered for the use-case you have in mind.
… and it looks like they’re hiring a writer!