I half agree. If you are going to, it had better be good. It’s similar to how, if you’re going to tell a racist joke, it had better be funny.
One thing that should have been noticed is the specificity of the proposal: (x-y)/2. The more specific the proposal, the more likely it is to be sub-optimal, “2” should have been a variable. The less the numbers are bouncing around as variables in your mind, the less likely it is you are thinking about it on a sufficiently general level for it to be fit for LW.
This is part of “hold off on proposing solutions until you have discussed the problem thoroughly”.
I am amused at this comment more than anything else. Of course it should have been (x-y)/r where 1<r<infinity. And of course correspondingly there is no reason to set x to exactly current minimum_wage* 1.5. Your preferred method of writing and talking reminds me a lot of what I tended to do as a Computer Science undergraduate who studied discrete mathematics and formal logic and liked to make statements unambiguously in first order logic. This was all the more because I was doing a bunch of courses that involved mathematical proofs which obviously lended themselves to that format.
The reason why this kind of writing is sub-optimal is the following:
That kind of precise writing is needlessly hard to parse.
Even after people parse it, to see the intuition behind it, people necessarily have to ground it in some typical/decent instantiations of values. It is therefore much better and you transfer more bits of information from mind to mind per unit time if you directly give people the specific example and allow them to generalize the idea behind the theory in their minds.
Admittedly I could have written what I did above and still given you the generalized thing stating the different knobs that could be tweaked in the example. I however thought that at least the knobs above were perfectly obvious to any person intelligent enough to understand my example. I saw no point to treat my reader with kid gloves here.
Again, I wasn’t proposing a final solution that should be implemented tomorrow! And unless you are among a weird rare set of people incapable of reading anything other than bullet proof first order logic I find it hard to believe that you can ever read such a thing into this. In fact I would argue that there is no easy way to tell the optimal parameters above and possibly even in additional generalizations without any real empirical data regarding the utility functions of different people, how they respond to incentives, what is the histogram of people at different levels of wage in a world with no prevailing wage floor in different places etc. You would also need to evaluate if any fresh perverse incentives get created if this is implemented in some places and not others. All these go for any idea that is economics related and it is foolish to not put an idea up for discussion until you have collected data from all over the world and analyzed it thoroughly to get the optimal set of parameters, have guarded for perverse incentives thoroughly etc.
I am now an internet entrepreneur and have realized that the main objective with communication in most settings (writing research papers, pitching VCs, pitching other companies for partnerships etc.) is to transfer maximum bits of information in the shortest possible time. It is not necessary to get verbose and guard yourself against any possibly misinterpretation in the world. Such language is best used only in the context of an adversarial scenario such as a debate or a legal battle where the other party has every incentive in the world to misrepresent any of your statements, throw red-herring arguments your way etc. This is exactly why legal language is so tedious and annoying—to avoid adversarial parties at any point coming up with responses such as yours. In most normal non-adversarial scenarios, this approach is extremely sub-optimal for communication.
The reason why this kind of writing is sub-optimal is the following...It is not necessary to get verbose and guard yourself against any possibly misinterpretation in the world...this approach is extremely sub-optimal for communication.
To some extent, I assumed you wrote it as you thought it, considering how the other things were variables and just as a general sense I had. The sign that it’s not abstract and that you are likely not holding off on proposing solutions is in how one thinks about it regardless of how one ultimately writes it.
I’m not primarily arguing that writing abstractly is always optimal (it admittedly may not have been here), but that thinking concretised is suboptimal, and writing concretised is correlated with concretized thinking. It’s like Solomon’s Problem.
So I have no large beef with how you wrote it, and I think you wrote the idea you had in a more than adequate way, but I and many others see it as not on topic. I think that that is because it is too specific. If this (ideal?) way of writing was a reflection of your thoughts, that should have been a hint that the thoughts weren’t general enough.
My judgement is very susceptible to being wrong insofar as you may have thought about it totally abstractly and been good at avoiding too abstract writing; perhaps you have the good habit of translating the general thoughts in your mind into exemplary exemplary (sic) words, in which case you wouldn’t have had this specific hint that this post was fairly off topic by its narrowness.
Again, I wasn’t proposing a final solution that should be implemented tomorrow!
This confused me for a while. In my opinion, it is more specific ideas that are better prepared to be implemented, i.e. the applications of more general forms. I hadn’t expected as a defense against a charge of being too practical and not theoretical enough an emphasis of the distance between the idea and its implementation. In general, one isn’t concerned with perfection in the initial presentation of any idea, that makes sense, and one brings up the distance from implementation to show critics (that’s me) are nitpicking (me?) and misguided (could be me) when they treat a floated idea inappropriately by subjecting it to a standard suited for smoothing a refined idea by removing the tiniest flaws.
As in this particular instance, I was arguing for generality as against practicality, I was truly confused when you spoke to the idea of differing standards being appropriate at different stages of an idea’s life by using the language of distance to implementation. Eventually, I got it ;)
| perhaps you have the good habit of translating the general thoughts in your mind into
|exemplary exemplary (sic) words,
Yes I do and it has served me very well with regard to being a clearer communicator. It’s all the more helpful when communicating with people less used to talking abstractly. I strongly suggest you try it. You’ll save time and be more clear 95% of the time unless the people you are communicating with are some really biased sample.
| in which case you wouldn’t have had this specific hint that this post was fairly off topic by its narrowness.
Other people have downvoted your post/said it should be taken from the main page/criticized it and given general criticisms. I believe that I am being more specific than they and agreeing with them. The problem with this post is that it is narrow, specific, too close to an implementation that “should be implemented tomorrow!” It is not general enough, abstract enough, to fit here. I am articulating why I think it doesn’t fit, and I think I am explaining why the others think so.
So, if when considering whether or not to post something on the LW main page, part of what I am considering is an economic proposal with a big fat “3 cents” with the number three rather than something I am thinking of in variables, that should be a big flashing warning sign that I am making the mistake of suggesting something too removed from its abstract, generalizable framework, I am possibly summoning politics, the mind killer, as a side effect, and I probably committed the error of not thinking through a problem before being fixated on a specific, narrow solution. “Tax energy use” would be better, “internalize externalities” better still.
I half agree. If you are going to, it had better be good. It’s similar to how, if you’re going to tell a racist joke, it had better be funny.
One thing that should have been noticed is the specificity of the proposal: (x-y)/2. The more specific the proposal, the more likely it is to be sub-optimal, “2” should have been a variable. The less the numbers are bouncing around as variables in your mind, the less likely it is you are thinking about it on a sufficiently general level for it to be fit for LW.
This is part of “hold off on proposing solutions until you have discussed the problem thoroughly”.
I am amused at this comment more than anything else. Of course it should have been (x-y)/r where 1<r<infinity. And of course correspondingly there is no reason to set x to exactly current minimum_wage* 1.5. Your preferred method of writing and talking reminds me a lot of what I tended to do as a Computer Science undergraduate who studied discrete mathematics and formal logic and liked to make statements unambiguously in first order logic. This was all the more because I was doing a bunch of courses that involved mathematical proofs which obviously lended themselves to that format.
The reason why this kind of writing is sub-optimal is the following:
That kind of precise writing is needlessly hard to parse.
Even after people parse it, to see the intuition behind it, people necessarily have to ground it in some typical/decent instantiations of values. It is therefore much better and you transfer more bits of information from mind to mind per unit time if you directly give people the specific example and allow them to generalize the idea behind the theory in their minds.
Admittedly I could have written what I did above and still given you the generalized thing stating the different knobs that could be tweaked in the example. I however thought that at least the knobs above were perfectly obvious to any person intelligent enough to understand my example. I saw no point to treat my reader with kid gloves here.
Again, I wasn’t proposing a final solution that should be implemented tomorrow! And unless you are among a weird rare set of people incapable of reading anything other than bullet proof first order logic I find it hard to believe that you can ever read such a thing into this. In fact I would argue that there is no easy way to tell the optimal parameters above and possibly even in additional generalizations without any real empirical data regarding the utility functions of different people, how they respond to incentives, what is the histogram of people at different levels of wage in a world with no prevailing wage floor in different places etc. You would also need to evaluate if any fresh perverse incentives get created if this is implemented in some places and not others. All these go for any idea that is economics related and it is foolish to not put an idea up for discussion until you have collected data from all over the world and analyzed it thoroughly to get the optimal set of parameters, have guarded for perverse incentives thoroughly etc.
I am now an internet entrepreneur and have realized that the main objective with communication in most settings (writing research papers, pitching VCs, pitching other companies for partnerships etc.) is to transfer maximum bits of information in the shortest possible time. It is not necessary to get verbose and guard yourself against any possibly misinterpretation in the world. Such language is best used only in the context of an adversarial scenario such as a debate or a legal battle where the other party has every incentive in the world to misrepresent any of your statements, throw red-herring arguments your way etc. This is exactly why legal language is so tedious and annoying—to avoid adversarial parties at any point coming up with responses such as yours. In most normal non-adversarial scenarios, this approach is extremely sub-optimal for communication.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t find lessdazed’s comment harder to parse or “worse” than yours. Plus, it was shorter!
I communicated my thoughts poorly.
To some extent, I assumed you wrote it as you thought it, considering how the other things were variables and just as a general sense I had. The sign that it’s not abstract and that you are likely not holding off on proposing solutions is in how one thinks about it regardless of how one ultimately writes it.
I’m not primarily arguing that writing abstractly is always optimal (it admittedly may not have been here), but that thinking concretised is suboptimal, and writing concretised is correlated with concretized thinking. It’s like Solomon’s Problem.
So I have no large beef with how you wrote it, and I think you wrote the idea you had in a more than adequate way, but I and many others see it as not on topic. I think that that is because it is too specific. If this (ideal?) way of writing was a reflection of your thoughts, that should have been a hint that the thoughts weren’t general enough.
My judgement is very susceptible to being wrong insofar as you may have thought about it totally abstractly and been good at avoiding too abstract writing; perhaps you have the good habit of translating the general thoughts in your mind into exemplary exemplary (sic) words, in which case you wouldn’t have had this specific hint that this post was fairly off topic by its narrowness.
This confused me for a while. In my opinion, it is more specific ideas that are better prepared to be implemented, i.e. the applications of more general forms. I hadn’t expected as a defense against a charge of being too practical and not theoretical enough an emphasis of the distance between the idea and its implementation. In general, one isn’t concerned with perfection in the initial presentation of any idea, that makes sense, and one brings up the distance from implementation to show critics (that’s me) are nitpicking (me?) and misguided (could be me) when they treat a floated idea inappropriately by subjecting it to a standard suited for smoothing a refined idea by removing the tiniest flaws.
As in this particular instance, I was arguing for generality as against practicality, I was truly confused when you spoke to the idea of differing standards being appropriate at different stages of an idea’s life by using the language of distance to implementation. Eventually, I got it ;)
| perhaps you have the good habit of translating the general thoughts in your mind into |exemplary exemplary (sic) words,
Yes I do and it has served me very well with regard to being a clearer communicator. It’s all the more helpful when communicating with people less used to talking abstractly. I strongly suggest you try it. You’ll save time and be more clear 95% of the time unless the people you are communicating with are some really biased sample.
| in which case you wouldn’t have had this specific hint that this post was fairly off topic by its narrowness.
narrow/specific/concrete<----------------------------------------------------------------->broad/abstract
raise the gas tax 3 cents........................tax energy use............................internalize externalities
Other people have downvoted your post/said it should be taken from the main page/criticized it and given general criticisms. I believe that I am being more specific than they and agreeing with them. The problem with this post is that it is narrow, specific, too close to an implementation that “should be implemented tomorrow!” It is not general enough, abstract enough, to fit here. I am articulating why I think it doesn’t fit, and I think I am explaining why the others think so.
So, if when considering whether or not to post something on the LW main page, part of what I am considering is an economic proposal with a big fat “3 cents” with the number three rather than something I am thinking of in variables, that should be a big flashing warning sign that I am making the mistake of suggesting something too removed from its abstract, generalizable framework, I am possibly summoning politics, the mind killer, as a side effect, and I probably committed the error of not thinking through a problem before being fixated on a specific, narrow solution. “Tax energy use” would be better, “internalize externalities” better still.