That sounds awesome! I have similar feelings. This is how I think about it. I don’t feel great about this as a way of explaining it, but perhaps it’d be useful.
Think about posts as forming some sort of spectrum. On one end (let’s say the right side) you’ve got something like a book. The ideas have been refined. The author spent a ton of time researching it, coming up with great examples, revising it, doing user testing on people, having professional editors look at it, etc. Next to a book maybe you’ve got something like an academic journal article. Next to that maybe an essay, or a blog post where a lot of effort has been put into it.
Then on the other end of the spectrum (left side) you’ve got maybe notes that are scribbled on the back of a napkin. Just the raw seeds of an idea. Then maybe after that you take that napkin home with you and expand a bit about those thoughts in a personal journal, but still very informal and unrefined. Then maybe you text a friend about it. Then maybe you email another friend. Then maybe posting on eg. the LW shortform. See, there’s a spectrum.
If you buy that there is this spectrum, which I think is pretty self-evident, it begs the question of how well we (LW? Rationality community? Society?) are doing at providing a platform for people at various points along that spectrum. I think that LW does a good job in the vicinity of “well researched blog post”, but for the sorts of things at the left side of the spectrum, I don’t really feel like LW addresses it. And I think that it is a cultural problem, not a technical one. We have things like Shortform, Open Thread, and various Slack and Discord groups. It’s just that, at least IME, people don’t use it for things that are on the left side of the spectrum, and thus it feels uncomfortable if you are doing things on left side of the spectrum, even if eg. the Personal Blog Posts are explicitly intended for “left side of the spectrum” types of thoughts.
So bringing this back full circle, seeing these sorts of not-fully-formed thoughts from you (Anna) is not only something I’d like to see for the more ground/object level value of those posts, but also because I think it’d push things in the right direction culturally.
That sounds awesome! I have similar feelings. This is how I think about it. I don’t feel great about this as a way of explaining it, but perhaps it’d be useful.
Think about posts as forming some sort of spectrum. On one end (let’s say the right side) you’ve got something like a book. The ideas have been refined. The author spent a ton of time researching it, coming up with great examples, revising it, doing user testing on people, having professional editors look at it, etc. Next to a book maybe you’ve got something like an academic journal article. Next to that maybe an essay, or a blog post where a lot of effort has been put into it.
Then on the other end of the spectrum (left side) you’ve got maybe notes that are scribbled on the back of a napkin. Just the raw seeds of an idea. Then maybe after that you take that napkin home with you and expand a bit about those thoughts in a personal journal, but still very informal and unrefined. Then maybe you text a friend about it. Then maybe you email another friend. Then maybe posting on eg. the LW shortform. See, there’s a spectrum.
If you buy that there is this spectrum, which I think is pretty self-evident, it begs the question of how well we (LW? Rationality community? Society?) are doing at providing a platform for people at various points along that spectrum. I think that LW does a good job in the vicinity of “well researched blog post”, but for the sorts of things at the left side of the spectrum, I don’t really feel like LW addresses it. And I think that it is a cultural problem, not a technical one. We have things like Shortform, Open Thread, and various Slack and Discord groups. It’s just that, at least IME, people don’t use it for things that are on the left side of the spectrum, and thus it feels uncomfortable if you are doing things on left side of the spectrum, even if eg. the Personal Blog Posts are explicitly intended for “left side of the spectrum” types of thoughts.
So bringing this back full circle, seeing these sorts of not-fully-formed thoughts from you (Anna) is not only something I’d like to see for the more ground/object level value of those posts, but also because I think it’d push things in the right direction culturally.