This is one of my bottlenecks on posting, so I’m hoping maybe someone will share thoughts on it that I might find useful:
I keep being torn between trying to write posts about things I have more-or-less understood already (which I therefore more-or-less know how to write up), and posts about things I presently care a lot about coming to a better understanding of (but where my thoughts are not so organized yet, and so trying to write about it involves much much use of the backspace, and ~80% of the time leads to me realizing the concepts are wrong, and going back to the drawing board).
I’m curious how others navigate this, or for general advice.
For me, I only do the former post when I want to really nail something and put loads of work into it (e.g. my common knowledge post).
I do the latter kind when I’ve just thought about a thing for a while and I feel like I got somewhere good. I don’t aim to write a perfect piece on it, I aim to write like I would explain my thinking in conversation. I typically can write such posts in ~2hrs (e.g. my environment post), and that seems worth publishing to me, and then time to move on with my thoughts.
posts about things I presently care a lot about coming to a better understanding of (but where my thoughts are not so organized yet, and so trying to write about it involves much much use of the backspace, and ~80% of the time leads to me realizing the concepts are wrong, and going back to the drawing board).
This is something that I’ve been thinking about. Currently I sense that the overwhelming majority of people are hesitant to write about ideas that are in this exploratory phase. But collaboration at the exploratory phase is important! I suspect that the main way this collaboration currently happens is that people text their friends, but I feel like we can do better than that.
I’m not exactly sure how. I think it’s largely a social problem. Ie. people need to feel like it is ok to post early stage exploratory thoughts that are likely to have problems. And the way to get to that point is probably to see other (high status) members of the community doing so. There’s a chicken-egg problem there, but it could probably be bootstrapped by just convincing a critical mass of people to just do it.
I should point out that the LessWrong team has tried to solve this problem with the shortform and by making personal blog posts a thing that is very babble-y. I think that is failing though because the social convention hasn’t changed, and the social convention is the crux of the problem.
Another possibility is that this type of exploratory conversation just doesn’t happen “in public”. It needs to happen in small, tight nit groups no larger than, say, four people. In which case it would be an interesting idea for eg. LessWrong to connect people and form such groups, that are limited in size and have the explicit goal of being for discussing exploratory ideas.
Edit: A big reason why I’m excited about the possibility of (drastically) improving this exploratory phase is because of how high a level of action it is. It should trickle down and have positive effects in many places. In theory.
Not the question you asked, but… is it possible to somehow make your writing easier, and then you perhaps wouldn’t have to choose between writing X or Y, because you could just write both?
For example, not sure how much time you spend writing and editing, but maybe you could just record yourself talking and writing on blackboard, and then someone else (willing to donate their time) could transcribe it, and then you would just do the final editing and submit the thing?
trying to write about it involves much much use of the backspace
There is no backspace if you talk. What would you do if the same thing happened to you during a lecture? Maybe say “oops, I was wrong about this, because...”—but this also can be included in the text. The entire wrong part could then be given a heading like “my first (unsuccessful) attempt”, which would make the reader less confused.
For things I am more confident about and I want to push or get more serious feedback on I post it in the Alignment Forum or the Effective Altruism Forum.
For example, when I started thinking about forecast aggregation I posted my unpolished thoughts here [1].
Now that I have grown more confident in my understanding I have been posting in the EA Forum [2].
This is not a hard rule, but I found the heuristic useful. My reasoning is something like:
LessWrong is a good place for wild speculation. I feel more likely to be called out on bullshit that does not make sense in a constructive way.
The EA Forum / Alignment Forum is less lenient of jargon and bullshit, plus it has a more consistent quality of content. It forces me to be more precise and rigourous.
This is one of my bottlenecks on posting, so I’m hoping maybe someone will share thoughts on it that I might find useful:
I keep being torn between trying to write posts about things I have more-or-less understood already (which I therefore more-or-less know how to write up), and posts about things I presently care a lot about coming to a better understanding of (but where my thoughts are not so organized yet, and so trying to write about it involves much much use of the backspace, and ~80% of the time leads to me realizing the concepts are wrong, and going back to the drawing board).
I’m curious how others navigate this, or for general advice.
For me, I only do the former post when I want to really nail something and put loads of work into it (e.g. my common knowledge post).
I do the latter kind when I’ve just thought about a thing for a while and I feel like I got somewhere good. I don’t aim to write a perfect piece on it, I aim to write like I would explain my thinking in conversation. I typically can write such posts in ~2hrs (e.g. my environment post), and that seems worth publishing to me, and then time to move on with my thoughts.
This is something that I’ve been thinking about. Currently I sense that the overwhelming majority of people are hesitant to write about ideas that are in this exploratory phase. But collaboration at the exploratory phase is important! I suspect that the main way this collaboration currently happens is that people text their friends, but I feel like we can do better than that.
I’m not exactly sure how. I think it’s largely a social problem. Ie. people need to feel like it is ok to post early stage exploratory thoughts that are likely to have problems. And the way to get to that point is probably to see other (high status) members of the community doing so. There’s a chicken-egg problem there, but it could probably be bootstrapped by just convincing a critical mass of people to just do it.
I should point out that the LessWrong team has tried to solve this problem with the shortform and by making personal blog posts a thing that is very babble-y. I think that is failing though because the social convention hasn’t changed, and the social convention is the crux of the problem.
Another possibility is that this type of exploratory conversation just doesn’t happen “in public”. It needs to happen in small, tight nit groups no larger than, say, four people. In which case it would be an interesting idea for eg. LessWrong to connect people and form such groups, that are limited in size and have the explicit goal of being for discussing exploratory ideas.
Edit: A big reason why I’m excited about the possibility of (drastically) improving this exploratory phase is because of how high a level of action it is. It should trickle down and have positive effects in many places. In theory.
Not the question you asked, but… is it possible to somehow make your writing easier, and then you perhaps wouldn’t have to choose between writing X or Y, because you could just write both?
For example, not sure how much time you spend writing and editing, but maybe you could just record yourself talking and writing on blackboard, and then someone else (willing to donate their time) could transcribe it, and then you would just do the final editing and submit the thing?
There is no backspace if you talk. What would you do if the same thing happened to you during a lecture? Maybe say “oops, I was wrong about this, because...”—but this also can be included in the text. The entire wrong part could then be given a heading like “my first (unsuccessful) attempt”, which would make the reader less confused.
I post all exploration/babble in LessWrong.
For things I am more confident about and I want to push or get more serious feedback on I post it in the Alignment Forum or the Effective Altruism Forum.
For example, when I started thinking about forecast aggregation I posted my unpolished thoughts here [1].
Now that I have grown more confident in my understanding I have been posting in the EA Forum [2].
This is not a hard rule, but I found the heuristic useful. My reasoning is something like:
LessWrong is a good place for wild speculation. I feel more likely to be called out on bullshit that does not make sense in a constructive way.
The EA Forum / Alignment Forum is less lenient of jargon and bullshit, plus it has a more consistent quality of content. It forces me to be more precise and rigourous.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mpDGNJFYzyKkg7zc2/aggregating-forecasts
[2] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/hjiBqAJNKhfJFq7kf/p/biL94PKfeHmgHY6qe