Note: I found the Roam document much more effortful to read than your usual writeups, causing me to basically bounce off of this review. Not sure what the correct tradeoffs are for you, but I sadly ended up getting much less value out of this spot-check than previous ones because of that.
I usually find the concrete claim-checks most useful, and since I didn’t know how to engage with the Roam document, this review was basically you just summarizing a high-level judgement in a domain I am not that interested in, but where I think I would have found a concrete walkthrough of some of the claims and how you think they were wrong quite useful.
Thanks; that is useful to know. I’m going to add a note asking other people if they have the same experience because that will make a big difference to me going forward.
My experience was similar to Habryka’s. I followed the “too small and subdivided” link to find more details on what exactly the book claimed about the research and how the research looked to you. I didn’t see more details on the page where I landed, and couldn’t tell where to navigate from there, so I gave up on that and didn’t bother clicking any other links from the article. I think I had a similar experience the last time you relied on Roam links. So I’ve been getting more out of your epistemic spot checks when they’ve included the content in the post.
I found it somewhat more useful, but that’s mostly because I am more interested in high-level thoughts in that domain. I found the first epistemic spot-check of the fate of rome more useful than the second one, largely due to the format differences, but also found the first one harder to engage with due to the distributions being actually somewhat hard to grapple with, compared to the way you had handled it previously.
Note: I found the Roam document much more effortful to read than your usual writeups, causing me to basically bounce off of this review. Not sure what the correct tradeoffs are for you, but I sadly ended up getting much less value out of this spot-check than previous ones because of that.
I usually find the concrete claim-checks most useful, and since I didn’t know how to engage with the Roam document, this review was basically you just summarizing a high-level judgement in a domain I am not that interested in, but where I think I would have found a concrete walkthrough of some of the claims and how you think they were wrong quite useful.
Thanks; that is useful to know. I’m going to add a note asking other people if they have the same experience because that will make a big difference to me going forward.
habryka, if you’re inclined to invest more time in this: did you have the same experience with https://acesounderglass.com/2019/10/24/epistemic-spot-check-the-fate-of-rome-round-2/ (which I just now realize never went up on LW)? Trying to narrow down if it’s the book or the format.
My experience was similar to Habryka’s. I followed the “too small and subdivided” link to find more details on what exactly the book claimed about the research and how the research looked to you. I didn’t see more details on the page where I landed, and couldn’t tell where to navigate from there, so I gave up on that and didn’t bother clicking any other links from the article. I think I had a similar experience the last time you relied on Roam links. So I’ve been getting more out of your epistemic spot checks when they’ve included the content in the post.
This is very helpful, thank you.
I found it somewhat more useful, but that’s mostly because I am more interested in high-level thoughts in that domain. I found the first epistemic spot-check of the fate of rome more useful than the second one, largely due to the format differences, but also found the first one harder to engage with due to the distributions being actually somewhat hard to grapple with, compared to the way you had handled it previously.