it sounds like you’re modeling patience as a quantity that people have either more or less of, while I think of patience as a budget that you need to split between different things
… it’s pretty obviously both?
Like, each person is going to have a quantity, and some people will have more or less, and each person will need to budget the quantity that they have available.
And separately, one can build up one’s capacity to bring deliberate patience to bear on worthwhile endeavors, thus increasing one’s available quantity of patience, or one can not.
What I’m trying to say about Logan’s writing in particular is something like “it takes a certain degree of patience (or perhaps more aptly, a certain leisurely pace) to notice its value at all (at which point one will be motivated to keep mining it for more); that degree of patience is set higher than 85+% of LessWrongers know to even try offering to a given piece, as an experiment, if they haven’t already decided the author is worth their attention.”
Like, each person is going to have a quantity, and some people will have more or less, and each person will need to budget the quantity that they have available.
Ah, that makes sense. I like that framing as an elegant way of combining the two.
that degree of patience is set higher than 85+% of LessWrongers know to even try offering to a given piece, as an experiment, if they haven’t already decided the author is worth their attention.
Do you have a model of how to change that? Like, just have the site select for readers that can afford that leisurely pace, or something else?
Like, there are ideas along the lines of “reward people for practicing the skill of patience generally” and “disincentivize or at least do not reward the people practicing the skill of impatience/making impatient demands.”
But a) that’s not really a model and those aren’t really plans, and b) creating the capacity for patient engagement still doesn’t solve the problem of knowing when to be patient and when to move on, for a given piece of writing.
… it’s pretty obviously both?
Like, each person is going to have a quantity, and some people will have more or less, and each person will need to budget the quantity that they have available.
And separately, one can build up one’s capacity to bring deliberate patience to bear on worthwhile endeavors, thus increasing one’s available quantity of patience, or one can not.
What I’m trying to say about Logan’s writing in particular is something like “it takes a certain degree of patience (or perhaps more aptly, a certain leisurely pace) to notice its value at all (at which point one will be motivated to keep mining it for more); that degree of patience is set higher than 85+% of LessWrongers know to even try offering to a given piece, as an experiment, if they haven’t already decided the author is worth their attention.”
Ah, that makes sense. I like that framing as an elegant way of combining the two.
Do you have a model of how to change that? Like, just have the site select for readers that can afford that leisurely pace, or something else?
Not really, alas.
Like, there are ideas along the lines of “reward people for practicing the skill of patience generally” and “disincentivize or at least do not reward the people practicing the skill of impatience/making impatient demands.”
But a) that’s not really a model and those aren’t really plans, and b) creating the capacity for patient engagement still doesn’t solve the problem of knowing when to be patient and when to move on, for a given piece of writing.