There’s a lot I want to try to tell LessWrong about. A lot of models, perceptions, thoughts, patterns of thinking. It’s been growing and growing for me over the last several years.
A lot of the barrier to me posting it has been that I am (mostly unendorsedly) averse to publishing drafts that’re worse than my existing blog posts, or that may not make sense to people, or that talk about some things without having yet talked about other things that I care more about, or etc. This aversion seems basically mistaken to me because “trial and error, with lower standards for writing things at all” is probably the fastest way I can figure out how to make sense about any given thing, really. So I’ll be trying to lower my standards for what to publish (we’ll see how successful I am or am not about that), and I’ll be leaving this note as a placeholder to try to feel a bit less awkward about that. Also, unless explicitly noted otherwise, none of my posts speak for CFAR or its staff or anyone else other than me.
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.
FYI this problem is also part of what shortform is for – you can get half-formed ideas out there, and then if they turn out to be pretty-close-to-publishable-as-top-level-post you can repost them. (Oliver used to do some publishing of his thoughts via shortform, and then later republish them as posts)
There’s a lot I want to try to tell LessWrong about. A lot of models, perceptions, thoughts, patterns of thinking. It’s been growing and growing for me over the last several years.
A lot of the barrier to me posting it has been that I am (mostly unendorsedly) averse to publishing drafts that’re worse than my existing blog posts, or that may not make sense to people, or that talk about some things without having yet talked about other things that I care more about, or etc. This aversion seems basically mistaken to me because “trial and error, with lower standards for writing things at all” is probably the fastest way I can figure out how to make sense about any given thing, really. So I’ll be trying to lower my standards for what to publish (we’ll see how successful I am or am not about that), and I’ll be leaving this note as a placeholder to try to feel a bit less awkward about that. Also, unless explicitly noted otherwise, none of my posts speak for CFAR or its staff or anyone else other than me.
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.
I missed this comment when it first went up.
FYI this problem is also part of what shortform is for – you can get half-formed ideas out there, and then if they turn out to be pretty-close-to-publishable-as-top-level-post you can repost them. (Oliver used to do some publishing of his thoughts via shortform, and then later republish them as posts)