I agree with many of the existing answers, in particular Kaj’s, but wanted to point out another factor, which in my own experience, contributes to not publishing many ideas despite having many half-baked ideas.
I think, even among people who have a lot of ideas, where having ideas is defined as having them appear (or be produced) within your conscious awareness, actually formalizing and publishing ideas requires overcoming multiple hurdles.
In this blog post about researcher productivity, the author summarizes a paper by William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, that posits and tries to explain why researcher productivity levels fit a log-normal distribution. I quote:
Shockley suggest that producing a paper is tantamount to clearing every one of a sequence of hurdles. He specifically lists:
1. ability to think of a good problem
2. ability to work on it
3. ability to recognize a worthwhile result
4. ability to make a decision as to when to stop and write up the results
5. ability to write adequately
6. ability to profit constructively from criticism
7. determination to submit the paper to a journal
8. persistence in making changes (if necessary as a result of journal action).
Shockley then posits, what if the odds of a person clearing hurdle #i from the list of 8 above is pi? Then the rate of publishing papers for this individual should be proportional to p1p2p3…p8. This gives the multiplication of random variables needed to explain the lognormal distribution of productivity (Shockley goes on to note that if one person is 50% above average in each of the 8 areas then they will be 2460% more productive than average at the total process).
In my own experience, the ideas to published piece of writing pipeline is similar. In order to go from idea to post, I have to:
have a good idea;
write it down;
block out time to expand upon it;
(in some cases) find data that supports it;
survey literature to see if someone’s had it or disproven it before;
(in some cases) write a program or do some math to flesh it out; and
write something coherent explaining it.
Reinforcement/rewards help individuals summon the extrinsic or intrinsic motivation to persist through these phases. That said, I also think it makes sense for individuals to figure out in which of these phases they typically fail.
In my own life, I’ve recently been experimenting with lowering my own expectations for my data-gathering, literature survey, and editing phases in order to get more of my ideas down in writing. My recent Babble, Learning, and the Typical Mind Fallacy is an example of my attempts at this. Given its low popularity on LessWrong, I may have bulldozed my way through hurdles I should’ve still jumped, but it’s better than nothing.
This doesn’t quite seem right, because just multiplying probabilities only works when all the quantities are independent. However, I’d put higher odds on someone having the ability to recognize a worthwhile result conditional on them having an ability to work on a problem, then having the ability to recognize a worthwhile result, so the multiplication of probabilities will be higher than it seems at first.
I’m unsure whether this consideration affects whether the distribution would be lognormal or not.
I checked out the post you linked because I found this comment to be both well-written and insightful.
And I found your essay to be similarly interesting, so I’m just as surprised as you are by the non-existent reception.
Perhaps we should be aware of trivial inconveniences? Clicking a link might not seem like much of an investment, but when there are so many other quality posts on this site, it could be just enough of a hassle to deter engagement. Especially since you appear to be a newer member of Lesswrong, so you haven’t had time to develop a reputation as a high-level contributer.
Yeah, I almost wish I’d excluded that reference to my own post. Re-reading it now, I realize it comes off as “woe is me, no one read my post” but I more meant it as “just removing hurdles has its own problems, like sometimes publishing stuff that isn’t very good. Therefore, I’m not yet sure where the right balance lies.”
I agree with many of the existing answers, in particular Kaj’s, but wanted to point out another factor, which in my own experience, contributes to not publishing many ideas despite having many half-baked ideas.
I think, even among people who have a lot of ideas, where having ideas is defined as having them appear (or be produced) within your conscious awareness, actually formalizing and publishing ideas requires overcoming multiple hurdles.
In this blog post about researcher productivity, the author summarizes a paper by William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, that posits and tries to explain why researcher productivity levels fit a log-normal distribution. I quote:
In my own experience, the ideas to published piece of writing pipeline is similar. In order to go from idea to post, I have to:
have a good idea;
write it down;
block out time to expand upon it;
(in some cases) find data that supports it;
survey literature to see if someone’s had it or disproven it before;
(in some cases) write a program or do some math to flesh it out; and
write something coherent explaining it.
Reinforcement/rewards help individuals summon the extrinsic or intrinsic motivation to persist through these phases. That said, I also think it makes sense for individuals to figure out in which of these phases they typically fail.
In my own life, I’ve recently been experimenting with lowering my own expectations for my data-gathering, literature survey, and editing phases in order to get more of my ideas down in writing. My recent Babble, Learning, and the Typical Mind Fallacy is an example of my attempts at this. Given its low popularity on LessWrong, I may have bulldozed my way through hurdles I should’ve still jumped, but it’s better than nothing.
This doesn’t quite seem right, because just multiplying probabilities only works when all the quantities are independent. However, I’d put higher odds on someone having the ability to recognize a worthwhile result conditional on them having an ability to work on a problem, then having the ability to recognize a worthwhile result, so the multiplication of probabilities will be higher than it seems at first.
I’m unsure whether this consideration affects whether the distribution would be lognormal or not.
I checked out the post you linked because I found this comment to be both well-written and insightful.
And I found your essay to be similarly interesting, so I’m just as surprised as you are by the non-existent reception.
Perhaps we should be aware of trivial inconveniences? Clicking a link might not seem like much of an investment, but when there are so many other quality posts on this site, it could be just enough of a hassle to deter engagement. Especially since you appear to be a newer member of Lesswrong, so you haven’t had time to develop a reputation as a high-level contributer.
I second the trivial inconveniences point. I have to have good reason to expect a post is quite good before I’ll bother clicking a link to read it.
Yeah, I almost wish I’d excluded that reference to my own post. Re-reading it now, I realize it comes off as “woe is me, no one read my post” but I more meant it as “just removing hurdles has its own problems, like sometimes publishing stuff that isn’t very good. Therefore, I’m not yet sure where the right balance lies.”