Yes, I can understand the trouble with shorter posts when I’m trying to make detailed arguments. I try to give a little bit of the convergent evidence and then upload PDFs of the rest of the evidence and point to them, but of course almost nobody is going to read those PDFs. Taking the space to explain a greater proportion of convergent evidence behind my positions is of course more persuasive and helpful to people, but it takes more time and hasn’t been the usual format of Less Wrong, which has traditionally heavily favored short articles with few or no citations of evidence.
Since every single comment in response to this article so far has been positive, which I don’t think has ever happened before with this many comments, I update in favor of doing this kind of thing again.
Yes, I can understand the trouble with shorter posts when I’m trying to make detailed arguments. I try to give a little bit of the convergent evidence and then upload PDFs of the rest of the evidence and point to them, but of course almost nobody is going to read those PDFs. Taking the space to explain a greater proportion of convergent evidence behind my positions is of course more persuasive and helpful to people, but it takes more time and hasn’t been the usual format of Less Wrong, which has traditionally heavily favored short articles with few or no citations of evidence.
Since every single comment in response to this article so far has been positive, which I don’t think has ever happened before with this many comments, I update in favor of doing this kind of thing again.
Oh, yeah, I can see how this would put a lot more burden on you, rather than us. Sorry and thanks for being awesome!