I feel like paragraph breaks in a 400 word document seem straightforwardly valuable for legibility, however well versed you are in a field. In someone posts a wall of text in LW I tell them to break it up even if it’s my field.
Okay it looks like for the particular thing I most recently was annoyed by, it’s 150 words.
This thing:
Although much recent attention has focused on identifying domain-specific taxonomic differences in cognition, little effort has been directed towards investigating whether domain-general differences also exist. We therefore conducted a meta-analysis of published nonhuman primate cognition studies, testing the prediction that some taxa outperform others across a range of testing situations. First, within each of nine experimental paradigms with interspecific variation, we grouped studies by their procedures and the characteristics of their study subjects. Then, using Bayesian latent variable methods, we tested whether taxonomic differences consistently held within or across paradigms. No genus performed especially well within particular paradigms, but genera differed significantly in overall performance. In addition, there was evidence of variation at higher taxonomic levels; most notably, great apes significantly outperformed other lineages. These results cannot be readily explained by perceptual biases or any other contextual confound and instead suggest that primate taxa differ in some kind of domain-general ability
Really seems to me like it’s supposed to be this thing:
Although much recent attention has focused on identifying domain-specific taxonomic differences in cognition, little effort has been directed towards investigating whether domain-general differences also exist. We therefore conducted a meta-analysis of published nonhuman primate cognition studies, testing the prediction that some taxa outperform others across a range of testing situations.
First, within each of nine experimental paradigms with interspecific variation, we grouped studies by their procedures and the characteristics of their study subjects. Then, using Bayesian latent variable methods, we tested whether taxonomic differences consistently held within or across paradigms.
No genus performed especially well within particular paradigms, but genera differed significantly in overall performance. In addition, there was evidence of variation at higher taxonomic levels; most notably, great apes significantly outperformed other lineages. These results cannot be readily explained by perceptual biases or any other contextual confound and instead suggest that primate taxa differ in some kind of domain-general ability
I do think, like, man, I wanted to know about primatology, and it seems pretty silly to assume that science should only be relevant to specialists in a field. Especially when the solution is literally just inserting two paragraph breaks.
(I might also make claims that academic papers should be doing more effortful things to be legible, but this just seemed like a fairly straightforward thing that was more of an obviously-bad-equilibrium than a “there’s a big effortful thing I think other people should do for other-other-people’s benefit.”)
I feel like paragraph breaks in a 400 word document seem straightforwardly valuable for legibility, however well versed you are in a field. In someone posts a wall of text in LW I tell them to break it up even if it’s my field.
Okay it looks like for the particular thing I most recently was annoyed by, it’s 150 words.
This thing:
Really seems to me like it’s supposed to be this thing:
RIP the concept of copy-pasting from a PDF.
I admit that that is a little more legible to me, although I’m not a researcher in the field of primatology.
I do think, like, man, I wanted to know about primatology, and it seems pretty silly to assume that science should only be relevant to specialists in a field. Especially when the solution is literally just inserting two paragraph breaks.
(I might also make claims that academic papers should be doing more effortful things to be legible, but this just seemed like a fairly straightforward thing that was more of an obviously-bad-equilibrium than a “there’s a big effortful thing I think other people should do for other-other-people’s benefit.”)