I would note that many of these factors apply as benefits of office-chat participation (OP) as well. The main benefit of FP absent from OP, I suppose, is preparing you for efficient written communication, but the rest seem feature in both. The fact that their benefits overlap explains why remote researchers benefit so much more than others from FP.
What about “FP is a good way to stay up to date on everyone else’s latest research” and “FP generates new ideas via cross-fertilization”? It seems like FP allows someone to follow, participate in, and cross-fertilize among many more lines of research than OP. (I should clarify that I don’t think everyone should do FP all the time. There are pros and cons to written vs verbal discussions so someone already in an office environment might be best served to do some of each, or some people within a research institute can do some of each in order to better spread and cross-fertilize ideas.)
I agree that some people can benefit from doing both, although getting everyone online is a hard collective action problem. I just claim that many researchers will satisfy with OP. At MIRI/FHI/OpenAI there are ~30-150 researchers, who think about a wide range of areas, which seems broadly comparable to the researchers among LessWrong/AF’s active users (depending on your definition of ‘researcher’, or ‘active’). Idea-exchange is extended by workshops and people moving jobs. Many in such a work environment will fund that FP has unacceptably low signal-noise ratio and will inevitably avoid FP...
Many in such a work environment will fund that FP has unacceptably low signal-noise ratio and will inevitably avoid FP...
I think FP has a better signal-cost ratio than workshops I’ve been to, in part because people tend to be more willing to talk about half-baked ideas in private, and in part because if I see some content online that I’m not interested in, I can quickly skip over it, while directly signaling disinterest to someone IRL is liable to hurt their feelings and accrue social cost to myself.
(I still try to attend workshops once a while, in part to physically meet people, in part to talk to people who rarely participate online, in part to get people’s private opinions that they don’t share online.)
I do think there are other powerful disincentives for FP though, and agree that it’s kind of an uphill battle to get more people online.
I would note that many of these factors apply as benefits of office-chat participation (OP) as well. The main benefit of FP absent from OP, I suppose, is preparing you for efficient written communication, but the rest seem feature in both. The fact that their benefits overlap explains why remote researchers benefit so much more than others from FP.
What about “FP is a good way to stay up to date on everyone else’s latest research” and “FP generates new ideas via cross-fertilization”? It seems like FP allows someone to follow, participate in, and cross-fertilize among many more lines of research than OP. (I should clarify that I don’t think everyone should do FP all the time. There are pros and cons to written vs verbal discussions so someone already in an office environment might be best served to do some of each, or some people within a research institute can do some of each in order to better spread and cross-fertilize ideas.)
I agree that some people can benefit from doing both, although getting everyone online is a hard collective action problem. I just claim that many researchers will satisfy with OP. At MIRI/FHI/OpenAI there are ~30-150 researchers, who think about a wide range of areas, which seems broadly comparable to the researchers among LessWrong/AF’s active users (depending on your definition of ‘researcher’, or ‘active’). Idea-exchange is extended by workshops and people moving jobs. Many in such a work environment will fund that FP has unacceptably low signal-noise ratio and will inevitably avoid FP...
I think FP has a better signal-cost ratio than workshops I’ve been to, in part because people tend to be more willing to talk about half-baked ideas in private, and in part because if I see some content online that I’m not interested in, I can quickly skip over it, while directly signaling disinterest to someone IRL is liable to hurt their feelings and accrue social cost to myself.
(I still try to attend workshops once a while, in part to physically meet people, in part to talk to people who rarely participate online, in part to get people’s private opinions that they don’t share online.)
I do think there are other powerful disincentives for FP though, and agree that it’s kind of an uphill battle to get more people online.