Eliezer’s post has one paragraph on RaDVaC. It’s a good paragraph but I wouldn’t expect anyone that didn’t hear about RaDVaC before and doesn’t take Eliezer as an important authority to be convinced by that paragraph that RaDVaC is worth funding. A longer post would likely have included a more clear case of why RaDVaC is worth funding. Writing that case down wouldn’t have been just for the sake of length.
Most people have not put tens of thousands of deliberate hours of practice into their writing skills so do not have the clarity to be able to say what they think shortly, and this lack of skill is typically why their writing is long. Eliezer has worked hard to be able to write clearly, and also to build a rare skill of being able to expose more of the cognition behind a thought as he writes longer, which is in many important domains more valuable to do than just stating the output of the cognition.
I’m saying: Eliezer’s has built the skill to say his thoughts precisely and clearly; but he has also built the next-level skill of being able to expose the cognition behind a thought, and this is the sort of valuable length that he hopes to have in his writing.
Just a comment on writing for understandability — compare Benjamin Franklin, writing in 1750:
Shorter is (almost always) better, please don’t write things longly just for the sake of it!
Eliezer’s post has one paragraph on RaDVaC. It’s a good paragraph but I wouldn’t expect anyone that didn’t hear about RaDVaC before and doesn’t take Eliezer as an important authority to be convinced by that paragraph that RaDVaC is worth funding. A longer post would likely have included a more clear case of why RaDVaC is worth funding. Writing that case down wouldn’t have been just for the sake of length.
Most people have not put tens of thousands of deliberate hours of practice into their writing skills so do not have the clarity to be able to say what they think shortly, and this lack of skill is typically why their writing is long. Eliezer has worked hard to be able to write clearly, and also to build a rare skill of being able to expose more of the cognition behind a thought as he writes longer, which is in many important domains more valuable to do than just stating the output of the cognition.
I’m saying: Eliezer’s has built the skill to say his thoughts precisely and clearly; but he has also built the next-level skill of being able to expose the cognition behind a thought, and this is the sort of valuable length that he hopes to have in his writing.