I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. I really liked the post the way it was, because the fact that it was all drawn on an Ipad clearly drastically reduced the trivial inconveniences for Abram to add small diagrams and illustrations, which is were a lot of the value of this post comes from. There did turn out to be long sections without illustrations, but I both think that Abram didn’t know how much text there would be before he started, and that I just really want to err on the side of people using whatever tools allows them to best get their ideas across.
I do think that searchability and referencability are really important. My model is that if we curate something like this, which does include a large amount of text, we should just pay $20 or so to have someone transcribe the images to text and add it to the bottom of the post, or comment on the post (related to that, happy to send anyone $20 via Venmo who wants to transcribe this thing and post it in a comment).
One of the things I really like about LessWrong is that we’ve historically had an openness to non-standard ways of explaining things. A lot of Eliezer’s writing included weird fictional dialogues, some weird bouts of poetry, personal stories, napkin diagrams and standard popular science explanations, and I feel having Abram’s comics on here continues that legacy quite well. I am excited about people experimenting with new ways of explaining things, and am very very hesitant to discourage that.
I agree with more or less everything people have said about the advantages of the text being actual text.
But also it’s fun and nice to have it handwritten and I think the benefits are non trivial.
So. Both? Just have both versions so everyone can enjoy the version that’s best for them?
I’ll go ahead and transcribe this one. (i’m currently learning two different alternative methods of typing and I’m at a stage where transcription is better practice than normal writing, and doing this will give be a nice opportunity to reflect on the post). I’ll have it done this weekend. Let me know where I should post the text.
(I basically agree that having the transcript would be good, but don’t think Abram should be any particular obligation to do so – exploring whimsical formats seems fine to me and if other people find it valuable enough to write a transcript that sounds good too)
One of the things I really like about LessWrong is that we’ve historically had an openness to non-standard ways of explaining things. A lot of Eliezer’s writing included weird fictional dialogues, some weird bouts of poetry, personal stories, napkin diagrams and standard popular science explanations, and I feel having Abram’s comics on here continues that legacy quite well. I am excited about people experimenting with new ways of explaining things, and am very very hesitant to discourage that.
Please see my comment elsethread about usability/accessibility/etc. Note that none[1] of the concerns I listed apply to Eliezer’s writing.
I think experimenting with non-standard ways of explaining things is great.
But a total disregard for usability and accessibility is not so great.
[1] Well, almost none; one may quibble that people on text-based browsers and screen readers won’t get the benefit of Eliezer’s diagrams—but at least they’ll have the rest of his posts, the overwhelming majority of the content of which is text, and which provide context for the diagrams. In contrast, with the OP, such users get absolutely nothing at all.
I am in favor of accessibility, but I would be highly surprised if more than 3% of users to LessWrong have a limitation of not being able to see images, so text-based browsers and screen readers do not strike me as a major concern. I am however in favor of reducing the size of the images to make it easier to read on mobile, since that is a much larger share of our users, but I don’t think this is something the author should have to worry about, but is instead something LessWrong should make as easy possible by providing our own tools for image upload and associated conversion into sensible formats. I do think that’s something we should improve relatively soon (and/or we would appreciate a PR on).
… I would be highly surprised if more than 3% of users to LessWrong have a limitation of not being able to see images, so text-based browsers and screen readers do not strike me as a major concern.
That may well be true, but please note that this was only one of eight issues I listed.
… the fact that it was all drawn on an Ipad clearly drastically reduced the trivial inconveniences for Abram to add small diagrams and illustrations …
I’m really not sure I buy this. What’s wrong with drawing the diagrams and illustrations on an iPad, and then putting them in as images, with the rest of the post being text? I’m not demanding any sort of “all diagrams must be painstakingly constructed in Illustrator” standard. By all means have hand-drawn diagrams!
… I … think that Abram didn’t know how much text there would be before he started …
I am not sure how to take this. Are we to understand that the OP is, quite literally, a first draft, which Abram simply started writing and just wrote all the way from start to finish without editing?
I have super wide bounds on the degree to which people use drafts. A lot of Scott Alexander’s writing is done without any editing, if I remember correctly, so it seems quite plausible to me that this is indeed Abram’s first draft, with only very minor editing.
I generally like the hand-written style and would like to see more of it. I’m guessing that style was net-positive for me here (and made me a lot more likely to read the whole thing), though I did experience some reading fatigue 2⁄3 through this post.
I have a similar preference. I don’t have any special accessibility needs, but text is generally easier to read for me because I can make adjustments to it to better fit where I’m reading. Text also makes translation easier, which I think of as extremely important since machine translation is good enough that you can read foreign language materials in your own language (for example, I often read German and Russian language things thanks to Google translate).
But of course if Abram would not post if he felt he had to provide text rather than images of text, I wouldn’t want that. Just all else equal I have a similar preference for text.
In contrast, I really liked it written out (which makes picture integration natural) and I was surprised to find others having problems reading it. My vision is 20⁄50 the last time I checked if that’s relevant.
I wondered the same thing. However, after thinking about it, I noticed that having the text be handwritten in different colors and sizes gave it a different feel, in a good way, in that the color and size in a way stood in for speech modulations like tone/volume/etc. One could change the font size and color in normal text, but I feel like that probably wouldn’t have had the same effect, though I could be wrong.
having the text be handwritten in different colors and sizes gave it a different feel, in a good way, in that the color and size in a way stood in for speech modulations like tone/volume/etc.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean, here—which means that any such effect, even if it’s intended, will simply not be perceived by some (many?) readers.
Other disadvantages of this “text as images” format:
Can’t search. (This one is huge, and it alone would make me strongly prefer text.)
Can’t set in whatever font/size I prefer to read in.
Can’t easily save/archive.
Can’t easily quote.
(Edited to add, as per gworley elsethread) Can’t machine-translate.
(Edited to add) Makes the post a way, way bigger download (problematic for people on slow/metered connections) and requires more HTTP requests (problematic for people on unreliable connections).
(Edited to add) Total lack of accessibility for people on text browsers, screen readers, etc.
(Edited to add) Scaling of images makes post unusually difficult to read on mobile devices.
Makes the post a way, way bigger download (problematic for people on slow/metered connections)
Let me emphasize this part by pointing out that this post contains over twenty megabytes of images.
Edit: Note that converting the images from PNGs to GIFs would cut the file size down by about 75 percent, with zero loss of quality (so it would only be about 5 MB of images—still totally unnecessary, IMO, but not quite as egregiously so).
Since when did GIFs have notably better compression than PNGs? (Perhaps the issue is that these are badly-generated PNGs, and simply loading them into something that knows how to write PNGs and saving them again would produce similar gains?)
It’s the color palette; you can indeed save them as 256-color PNGs and get the same file size reduction. I suggested converting to GIF because it’s more likely that the OP knows or can figure out how to do that, than that he has & knows how to use a tool which can save palette-reduced PNGs.
This is really hard to read. Is there some reason why all this text isn’t just… text? I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d very much prefer that…
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. I really liked the post the way it was, because the fact that it was all drawn on an Ipad clearly drastically reduced the trivial inconveniences for Abram to add small diagrams and illustrations, which is were a lot of the value of this post comes from. There did turn out to be long sections without illustrations, but I both think that Abram didn’t know how much text there would be before he started, and that I just really want to err on the side of people using whatever tools allows them to best get their ideas across.
I do think that searchability and referencability are really important. My model is that if we curate something like this, which does include a large amount of text, we should just pay $20 or so to have someone transcribe the images to text and add it to the bottom of the post, or comment on the post (related to that, happy to send anyone $20 via Venmo who wants to transcribe this thing and post it in a comment).
One of the things I really like about LessWrong is that we’ve historically had an openness to non-standard ways of explaining things. A lot of Eliezer’s writing included weird fictional dialogues, some weird bouts of poetry, personal stories, napkin diagrams and standard popular science explanations, and I feel having Abram’s comics on here continues that legacy quite well. I am excited about people experimenting with new ways of explaining things, and am very very hesitant to discourage that.
I agree with more or less everything people have said about the advantages of the text being actual text.
But also it’s fun and nice to have it handwritten and I think the benefits are non trivial.
So. Both? Just have both versions so everyone can enjoy the version that’s best for them?
I’ll go ahead and transcribe this one. (i’m currently learning two different alternative methods of typing and I’m at a stage where transcription is better practice than normal writing, and doing this will give be a nice opportunity to reflect on the post). I’ll have it done this weekend. Let me know where I should post the text.
Upvoted for putting in the work to do the thing!
(I basically agree that having the transcript would be good, but don’t think Abram should be any particular obligation to do so – exploring whimsical formats seems fine to me and if other people find it valuable enough to write a transcript that sounds good too)
nevermind, looks like gjm already did the thing
My apologies for interfering with your typing practice!
Please see my comment elsethread about usability/accessibility/etc. Note that none[1] of the concerns I listed apply to Eliezer’s writing.
I think experimenting with non-standard ways of explaining things is great.
But a total disregard for usability and accessibility is not so great.
[1] Well, almost none; one may quibble that people on text-based browsers and screen readers won’t get the benefit of Eliezer’s diagrams—but at least they’ll have the rest of his posts, the overwhelming majority of the content of which is text, and which provide context for the diagrams. In contrast, with the OP, such users get absolutely nothing at all.
I am in favor of accessibility, but I would be highly surprised if more than 3% of users to LessWrong have a limitation of not being able to see images, so text-based browsers and screen readers do not strike me as a major concern. I am however in favor of reducing the size of the images to make it easier to read on mobile, since that is a much larger share of our users, but I don’t think this is something the author should have to worry about, but is instead something LessWrong should make as easy possible by providing our own tools for image upload and associated conversion into sensible formats. I do think that’s something we should improve relatively soon (and/or we would appreciate a PR on).
That may well be true, but please note that this was only one of eight issues I listed.
Separately from my other comment:
I’m really not sure I buy this. What’s wrong with drawing the diagrams and illustrations on an iPad, and then putting them in as images, with the rest of the post being text? I’m not demanding any sort of “all diagrams must be painstakingly constructed in Illustrator” standard. By all means have hand-drawn diagrams!
I am not sure how to take this. Are we to understand that the OP is, quite literally, a first draft, which Abram simply started writing and just wrote all the way from start to finish without editing?
I have super wide bounds on the degree to which people use drafts. A lot of Scott Alexander’s writing is done without any editing, if I remember correctly, so it seems quite plausible to me that this is indeed Abram’s first draft, with only very minor editing.
I generally like the hand-written style and would like to see more of it. I’m guessing that style was net-positive for me here (and made me a lot more likely to read the whole thing), though I did experience some reading fatigue 2⁄3 through this post.
As with podcasts, the obvious solution (and the one I’d recommend) is to provide both formats—the “fancy” one, and also a pure-text transcript.
I have a similar preference. I don’t have any special accessibility needs, but text is generally easier to read for me because I can make adjustments to it to better fit where I’m reading. Text also makes translation easier, which I think of as extremely important since machine translation is good enough that you can read foreign language materials in your own language (for example, I often read German and Russian language things thanks to Google translate).
But of course if Abram would not post if he felt he had to provide text rather than images of text, I wouldn’t want that. Just all else equal I have a similar preference for text.
In contrast, I really liked it written out (which makes picture integration natural) and I was surprised to find others having problems reading it. My vision is 20⁄50 the last time I checked if that’s relevant.
My vision is 20⁄20 (with glasses). I don’t think this has anything to do with vision problems.
I wondered the same thing. However, after thinking about it, I noticed that having the text be handwritten in different colors and sizes gave it a different feel, in a good way, in that the color and size in a way stood in for speech modulations like tone/volume/etc. One could change the font size and color in normal text, but I feel like that probably wouldn’t have had the same effect, though I could be wrong.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean, here—which means that any such effect, even if it’s intended, will simply not be perceived by some (many?) readers.
Other disadvantages of this “text as images” format:
Can’t search. (This one is huge, and it alone would make me strongly prefer text.)
Can’t set in whatever font/size I prefer to read in.
Can’t easily save/archive.
Can’t easily quote.
(Edited to add, as per gworley elsethread) Can’t machine-translate.
(Edited to add) Makes the post a way, way bigger download (problematic for people on slow/metered connections) and requires more HTTP requests (problematic for people on unreliable connections).
(Edited to add) Total lack of accessibility for people on text browsers, screen readers, etc.
(Edited to add) Scaling of images makes post unusually difficult to read on mobile devices.
Let me emphasize this part by pointing out that this post contains over twenty megabytes of images.
Edit: Note that converting the images from PNGs to GIFs would cut the file size down by about 75 percent, with zero loss of quality (so it would only be about 5 MB of images—still totally unnecessary, IMO, but not quite as egregiously so).
Since when did GIFs have notably better compression than PNGs? (Perhaps the issue is that these are badly-generated PNGs, and simply loading them into something that knows how to write PNGs and saving them again would produce similar gains?)
It’s the color palette; you can indeed save them as 256-color PNGs and get the same file size reduction. I suggested converting to GIF because it’s more likely that the OP knows or can figure out how to do that, than that he has & knows how to use a tool which can save palette-reduced PNGs.
Ah, I see. Yes, that would be an improvement, maybe 10% as good as just making the stuff be text in the first place.