You’re right, writing concisely is definitely a learned skill.
I became pretty good at it, but that’s only through practice and helpful editors at my college student newspaper and a couple of newspaper internships. If you want to improve your professional writing skills, find a place where you can practice and people will point out your flaws so you can improve. LessWrong can definitely serve that function.
Glad you have a thick skin, glad you could start a useful conversation, and hope to see more of you in the future!
I’ve often lamented the fact that colleges so frequently assign papers with excessive minimum page limits when they would better serve their students by applying restrictive maximum page limits. Instead of learning to appreciate conciseness as a virtue and a skill, students come away with the association that a piece of writing must be long to be respectable, a lesson which many, it seems, go on to apply in their careers.
Thank you, although it’s not so much the writing per se as the analysis of the precise structure of the inferential gaps that needed to be bridged.
And you’ll see lots more of me in the future. I honestly think a big part of the reason I got over my fear of it not being perfect and posted it already was because I’m very lonely, and the case study of the NYC rationalist chapter was the biggest carrot ever.
It’s not that I’m socially inept. Quite the opposite, when I apply myself. It’s just that I get so damn tired of… well, you know, the second paragraph sums it up perfectly already, doesn’t it?
Being rational in an irrational world is incredibly lonely. Every interaction reveals that our thought processes differ widely from those around us, and I had accepted that such a divide would always exist. For the first time in my life I have dozens of people with whom I can act freely and revel in the joy of rationality without any social concern—hell, it’s actively rewarded! Until the NYC Less Wrong community formed, I didn’t realize that I was a forager lost without a tribe...
As to having a thick skin, I was actually pretty depressed the first day I got up and saw the first batch of comments, which seemed very negative, like Alicorn’s.
“Pretty depressed” as in not able to keep myself from wondering whether my failure to just commit a nice painless suicide already due to my self-preservation instinct was essentially a form of akrasia. (Obviously, past issues exist, and I’ve been using my informal understanding of REBT to keep myself together, although I think I am “naturally” a very optimistic person.)
But I forced myself to confront the question and admit, as I always do, that I do care, and am going to keep on fighting no matter how impossible success seems or how much it seems that I always just end up getting hurt over and over again, so I may as well stop whining to myself and get back to work! So I cheered myself up.
And then I got home and saw that the situation was actually pretty damn good (had like 20 upvotes, and a couple very positive messages from a few individuals), so...
I don’t think I’m going to have a crisis of faith in “the light in the world” ever again.
You’re right, writing concisely is definitely a learned skill.
I became pretty good at it, but that’s only through practice and helpful editors at my college student newspaper and a couple of newspaper internships. If you want to improve your professional writing skills, find a place where you can practice and people will point out your flaws so you can improve. LessWrong can definitely serve that function.
Glad you have a thick skin, glad you could start a useful conversation, and hope to see more of you in the future!
I’ve often lamented the fact that colleges so frequently assign papers with excessive minimum page limits when they would better serve their students by applying restrictive maximum page limits. Instead of learning to appreciate conciseness as a virtue and a skill, students come away with the association that a piece of writing must be long to be respectable, a lesson which many, it seems, go on to apply in their careers.
Thank you, although it’s not so much the writing per se as the analysis of the precise structure of the inferential gaps that needed to be bridged.
And you’ll see lots more of me in the future. I honestly think a big part of the reason I got over my fear of it not being perfect and posted it already was because I’m very lonely, and the case study of the NYC rationalist chapter was the biggest carrot ever.
It’s not that I’m socially inept. Quite the opposite, when I apply myself. It’s just that I get so damn tired of… well, you know, the second paragraph sums it up perfectly already, doesn’t it?
As to having a thick skin, I was actually pretty depressed the first day I got up and saw the first batch of comments, which seemed very negative, like Alicorn’s.
“Pretty depressed” as in not able to keep myself from wondering whether my failure to just commit a nice painless suicide already due to my self-preservation instinct was essentially a form of akrasia. (Obviously, past issues exist, and I’ve been using my informal understanding of REBT to keep myself together, although I think I am “naturally” a very optimistic person.)
But I forced myself to confront the question and admit, as I always do, that I do care, and am going to keep on fighting no matter how impossible success seems or how much it seems that I always just end up getting hurt over and over again, so I may as well stop whining to myself and get back to work! So I cheered myself up.
And then I got home and saw that the situation was actually pretty damn good (had like 20 upvotes, and a couple very positive messages from a few individuals), so...
I don’t think I’m going to have a crisis of faith in “the light in the world” ever again.