So, what’s wrong with this article? Is it bad prose, or too hand-wavy assertions, or overly obscure presentation/inferential distance, or too much text, or too obvious a point? Please leave a comment, I really don’t understand.
In general, I think that getting a custom of writing some formal review-like comments would be valuable as feedback, not about the subject of the article, but about presentation, especially if the article looks bad and there is much for the author to work on improving.
I think it’s a stylistic issue: there are too many function words. After finishing a draft, do a second pass deleting as many unnecessary words as possible. If changing the tense or person lets you eliminate a few pronouns, do so. I applied my personal editing procedure to your second paragraph, and went from this:
The following model is used to describe the process of getting from a question to a (potentially biased) answer for the purposes of this article. First, you ask yourself a question. Second, in the context of the question, a data set is presented before your mind, either directly, by you looking at the explicit statements of fact, or indirectly, by associated facts becoming salient to your attention, triggered by the explicit data items or by the question. Third, you construct an intuitive model of some phenomenon, that allows to see its properties, as a result of considering the data set. And finally, you pronounce the answer, that is read out as one of the properties of the model you’ve just constructed.
To this:
The following model describes the process of getting from questions to (possibly biased) answers. First, ask a question. That brings a data set to mind, either directly (by looking at explicit statements of fact), or indirectly (by associated facts coming to your attention, triggered by explicit data items or by the question). Then, using that data set, construct an intuitive model of the phenomenon that lets you see its properties. Finally, read out the answer as a property of the model you’ve constructed.
I didn’t change anything in the actual content, but to my mind this reads much better.
You don’t provide any examples and your text is too dense and abstract. Try using smaller words and shorter sentences. Also, you put too much emphasis on your numbering scheme: You bold “The first mistake” and then you de-emphasize the part where you actually say what that mistake is, and the rest of the paragraph is a wall of text.
It’s also, frankly, not very helpful.
The irrelevant data may find its way in your thoughts covertly, through priming effects you don’t even notice… Don’t think about fictional evidence, don’t think about the facts that look superficially relevant to the question, but actually aren’t
You can’t avoid priming effects once you’ve been primed. “Don’t think about it” just won’t work.
It seems like the main point of your post is to present biases in a new way: modeling them all as some form of “using the wrong data.” I’m skeptical that this is a helpful model, but honestly, I would probably be a lot less skeptical if your post focused on that main point more clearly.
density of ideas too low
—long section resummarizing old posts
prose hard to read, feels somehow flat
—try using shorter paragraphs, varying sentence lengths, using more tangible words and examples
Comparing to Robin’s and Eliezer’s stuff, the gold standards:
Robin’s are generally very short, high-level, and high-density. Easy to read quickly for “what’s this about? do I care?” and then reread several times to think carefully about.
Eliezer’s are long and lower-density but meticulous and carefully arranged so that the ideas build brick on brick (and also offset length with effective, dramatic prose).
I would suggest trying to write this post Robin-style and see how it comes out: present your key points in as strong, terse and efficient a way as you can, even if you lose some people. Writing long posts seems harder.
Also, try pulling out some individual sentences and reading them out of context. Just to grab one almost at random: “Contamination by Priming is a problem that relates to the process of implicitly introducing the facts in the attended data set.” Pretty inscrutable.
Compare to Anna Salomon’s description of the same thing: “To sum up the principle briefly: your brain builds you up a self-image. You are the kind of person who says, and does… whatever it is your brain remembers you saying and doing.” Even though hers is longer in words, the concepts are clearer and more explicit. The text is bouncier and has more places for the mind to grab onto.
Does it mean that your impression is that the text is hard to read and at the same time features redundancy? I guess it’s possible that I was unconsciously trying to compensate the opaque presentation with repetition...
I’m in the same boat as Mr. Hen. I haven’t thoroughly read it yet because honestly it looks long. Your recommendations look obvious at first glance, which lessens the incentive to read deeper.
I would have moved the three general mistakes to the beginning and tightened up their description a little more. That would do a better job of drawing people into the article, and then you could describe how the three mistakes manifest themselves in the specific biases. Is there a (representative!) anecdote that could liven it up?
I wonder if it would be worthwhile for some of the less experienced writers to set up an informal draft exchange. It’d be nice to have another set of eyes look over an article before posting it. I don’t have plans for any articles in the near future, but if anyone wants me to look over a draft , feel free to pm me.
The third and especially the second mistakes seem nontrivial to me (at least, I thought about them explicitly and written them down only about a month ago, which gave me the idea of writing this article).
Just to be clear, upon actually reading them, I agree with you. It’s just that on first glance they don’t look like anything new and are buried fairly deep in the article, so they are easy to pass over. That’s why I think it might have gone over better if you had lead with them.
No strong opinion of the content until I reread, but the writing style seems rather dry and abstract. That’s a problem I tend to have myself; probably it comes from not speaking English in daily life.
So, what’s wrong with this article? Is it bad prose, or too hand-wavy assertions, or overly obscure presentation/inferential distance, or too much text, or too obvious a point? Please leave a comment, I really don’t understand.
In general, I think that getting a custom of writing some formal review-like comments would be valuable as feedback, not about the subject of the article, but about presentation, especially if the article looks bad and there is much for the author to work on improving.
I think it’s a stylistic issue: there are too many function words. After finishing a draft, do a second pass deleting as many unnecessary words as possible. If changing the tense or person lets you eliminate a few pronouns, do so. I applied my personal editing procedure to your second paragraph, and went from this:
To this:
I didn’t change anything in the actual content, but to my mind this reads much better.
This comment made me wish I’d asked this question on every article I’ve written. I shall do next time!
Thanks, I’ll reedit the article in place, following this and other suggestions, and post a comment announcing the second revision.
You don’t provide any examples and your text is too dense and abstract. Try using smaller words and shorter sentences. Also, you put too much emphasis on your numbering scheme: You bold “The first mistake” and then you de-emphasize the part where you actually say what that mistake is, and the rest of the paragraph is a wall of text.
It’s also, frankly, not very helpful.
You can’t avoid priming effects once you’ve been primed. “Don’t think about it” just won’t work.
It seems like the main point of your post is to present biases in a new way: modeling them all as some form of “using the wrong data.” I’m skeptical that this is a helpful model, but honestly, I would probably be a lot less skeptical if your post focused on that main point more clearly.
I think the problem is a combination of:
length
density of ideas too low —long section resummarizing old posts
prose hard to read, feels somehow flat —try using shorter paragraphs, varying sentence lengths, using more tangible words and examples
Comparing to Robin’s and Eliezer’s stuff, the gold standards:
Robin’s are generally very short, high-level, and high-density. Easy to read quickly for “what’s this about? do I care?” and then reread several times to think carefully about.
Eliezer’s are long and lower-density but meticulous and carefully arranged so that the ideas build brick on brick (and also offset length with effective, dramatic prose).
I would suggest trying to write this post Robin-style and see how it comes out: present your key points in as strong, terse and efficient a way as you can, even if you lose some people. Writing long posts seems harder.
Also, try pulling out some individual sentences and reading them out of context. Just to grab one almost at random: “Contamination by Priming is a problem that relates to the process of implicitly introducing the facts in the attended data set.” Pretty inscrutable.
Compare to Anna Salomon’s description of the same thing: “To sum up the principle briefly: your brain builds you up a self-image. You are the kind of person who says, and does… whatever it is your brain remembers you saying and doing.” Even though hers is longer in words, the concepts are clearer and more explicit. The text is bouncier and has more places for the mind to grab onto.
Hope that helps? Good luck!
Thank you, that was helpful. I’ll write a shorter summary article in a few days (linking to a revised version of this article).
Something about it makes it hard to read—I had to squint and concentrate and even then my eyes kept skipping sentences.
Does it mean that your impression is that the text is hard to read and at the same time features redundancy? I guess it’s possible that I was unconsciously trying to compensate the opaque presentation with repetition...
I’m in the same boat as Mr. Hen. I haven’t thoroughly read it yet because honestly it looks long. Your recommendations look obvious at first glance, which lessens the incentive to read deeper.
I would have moved the three general mistakes to the beginning and tightened up their description a little more. That would do a better job of drawing people into the article, and then you could describe how the three mistakes manifest themselves in the specific biases. Is there a (representative!) anecdote that could liven it up?
I wonder if it would be worthwhile for some of the less experienced writers to set up an informal draft exchange. It’d be nice to have another set of eyes look over an article before posting it. I don’t have plans for any articles in the near future, but if anyone wants me to look over a draft , feel free to pm me.
The third and especially the second mistakes seem nontrivial to me (at least, I thought about them explicitly and written them down only about a month ago, which gave me the idea of writing this article).
Just to be clear, upon actually reading them, I agree with you. It’s just that on first glance they don’t look like anything new and are buried fairly deep in the article, so they are easy to pass over. That’s why I think it might have gone over better if you had lead with them.
No strong opinion of the content until I reread, but the writing style seems rather dry and abstract. That’s a problem I tend to have myself; probably it comes from not speaking English in daily life.
Honestly, I just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.
Of note, I have only ever considered the formatting a problem on one article here. I downvoted and sent the author a private message about it.