I have some ideas and drafts for posts that I’ve been sitting on because I feel somewhat intimidated by the level of intellectual rigor I would need to put into the final drafts to ensure I’m not downvoted into oblivion (something a younger me experienced in the early days of Less Wrong).
Should I try to overcome this fear, or is it justified?
For instance, I have a draft of a response to Eliezer’s List of Lethalities post that I’ve been sitting on since 2022/04/11 because I doubted it would be well received given that it tries to be hopeful and, as a former machine learning scientist, I try to challenge a lot of LW orthodoxy about AGI in it. I have tremendous respect for Eliezer though, so I’m also uncertain if my ideas and arguments aren’t just hairbrained foolishness that will be shot down rapidly once exposed to the real world, and the incisive criticism of Less Wrongers.
The posts here are also now of such high quality that I feel the bar is too high for me to meet with my writing, which tends to be more “interesting train-of-thought in unformatted paragraphs” than the “point-by-point articulate with section titles and footnotes” style that people tend to employ.
Personally, I find shortform to be an invaluable playground for ideas. When I get downvoted, it feels lower stakes. It’s easier to ignore aloof and smugnorant comments, and easier to update on serious/helpful comments. And depending on how it goes, I sometimes just turn it into a regular post later, with a note at the top saying that it was adapted from a shortform.
If you really want to avoid smackdowns, you could also just privately share your drafts with friends first and ask for respectful corrections.
Spitballing other ideas, I guess you could phrase your claims as questions, like “have objections X, Y, or Z been discussed somewhere already? If so, can anyone link me to those discussions?” Seems like that could fail silently though, if an over-eager commenter gives you a link to low-quality discussion. But there are pros and cons for every course of action/inaction.
I have some ideas and drafts for posts that I’ve been sitting on because I feel somewhat intimidated by the level of intellectual rigor I would need to put into the final drafts to ensure I’m not downvoted into oblivion (something a younger me experienced in the early days of Less Wrong).
Should I try to overcome this fear, or is it justified?
For instance, I have a draft of a response to Eliezer’s List of Lethalities post that I’ve been sitting on since 2022/04/11 because I doubted it would be well received given that it tries to be hopeful and, as a former machine learning scientist, I try to challenge a lot of LW orthodoxy about AGI in it. I have tremendous respect for Eliezer though, so I’m also uncertain if my ideas and arguments aren’t just hairbrained foolishness that will be shot down rapidly once exposed to the real world, and the incisive criticism of Less Wrongers.
The posts here are also now of such high quality that I feel the bar is too high for me to meet with my writing, which tends to be more “interesting train-of-thought in unformatted paragraphs” than the “point-by-point articulate with section titles and footnotes” style that people tend to employ.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Personally, I find shortform to be an invaluable playground for ideas. When I get downvoted, it feels lower stakes. It’s easier to ignore aloof and smugnorant comments, and easier to update on serious/helpful comments. And depending on how it goes, I sometimes just turn it into a regular post later, with a note at the top saying that it was adapted from a shortform.
If you really want to avoid smackdowns, you could also just privately share your drafts with friends first and ask for respectful corrections.
Spitballing other ideas, I guess you could phrase your claims as questions, like “have objections X, Y, or Z been discussed somewhere already? If so, can anyone link me to those discussions?” Seems like that could fail silently though, if an over-eager commenter gives you a link to low-quality discussion. But there are pros and cons for every course of action/inaction.