Thoughts on the unsuitability of adding more thresholds of quality control:
The idea of promoting things up a narrowing hierarchy falls into one’s lap as an easy fix. It won’t solve the problem, I think though, of how a good initial proposal of an idea just does not thrive on the same metrics as the write-up of common context needs to. A first draft is not just a shoddy version of a final draft; it actually does something different than the final copy. In the progression of idea generation to canon, someone has to do the transformation work. The same person could do it; general skill / ability over the whole progression exists and I genuinely hope we find a way to nurture it in people. I doubt the sense of counting on people’s skill (and willingness) at each step being transferable.
A first draft is not just a shoddy version of a final draft; it actually does something different than the final copy.
Very much agree with this (it’s a part of the followup posts I’m half finished with), although it doesn’t seem to me like it’s a major reason to have more, fewer or same thresholds.
My current best guess for where this site should be going is “make idea generation, first/second drafts, and final products all more visible, and decomposed slightly so the same person doesn’t necessarily have to do all of them.”
Some subcomponents of that are:
At different stages, different kinds of criticism are helpful. Gaining skill at delivering each kind of criticism is important. (The site should probably help people to learn which type is appropriate and how to deliver that type well. Although this also probably varies per person and post, and so rather than trying to standardize it it may be better to just let people specify what sort of criticism they’re looking for on a per-post basis. Dunno)
I think that making each stage public will make people err on the side of getting their ideas out there sooner rather than later – right now I know a lot of smart people who sit on ideas for months or years because they’re worried about releasing them, and my sense is this is both because they’re worried about looking dumb, and because they’re worried about bad/wrong ideas taking hold. My hope is that making blogposts feel more like first drafts and making sure that only ideas that been pretty rigorously evaluated make it into Canon can help address both concerns.
Writing things that are clear does seem like a different skill from idea generation, and we’re hoping to develop both UI/functionality and general culture such that people get credit reinforcement for working together to develop ideas.
I think the single best example of the process I’m hoping for looks like Scott Garrabrant’s Goodheart Taxonomy post, where people crowdsourced examples that made the post much more clear, and then those changes were incorporated, and then later someone else reworked it into a formal paper. (In this case I think the paper version is less clear than the blogpost, I think because part of the deal was it was reworded to sound more academic, which I think is bad for clarity but good for looking rigorous/prestigious, which isn’t the part I want to capture on LessWrong, but is something that seems valuable for interfacing with the outside world, and regardless I was glad to see the collaborative process)
This is a good point. There are a lot more works with the potential to be cannon-worthy, then which immediately belong to the cannon. However, I do worry for the potential of something to be lost when someone other than the author transforms the work. Hopefully, the original author is willing to stay involved in the transformation, even if they don’t want to do it all themselves.
Thoughts on the unsuitability of adding more thresholds of quality control:
The idea of promoting things up a narrowing hierarchy falls into one’s lap as an easy fix. It won’t solve the problem, I think though, of how a good initial proposal of an idea just does not thrive on the same metrics as the write-up of common context needs to. A first draft is not just a shoddy version of a final draft; it actually does something different than the final copy. In the progression of idea generation to canon, someone has to do the transformation work. The same person could do it; general skill / ability over the whole progression exists and I genuinely hope we find a way to nurture it in people. I doubt the sense of counting on people’s skill (and willingness) at each step being transferable.
Very much agree with this (it’s a part of the followup posts I’m half finished with), although it doesn’t seem to me like it’s a major reason to have more, fewer or same thresholds.
My current best guess for where this site should be going is “make idea generation, first/second drafts, and final products all more visible, and decomposed slightly so the same person doesn’t necessarily have to do all of them.”
Some subcomponents of that are:
At different stages, different kinds of criticism are helpful. Gaining skill at delivering each kind of criticism is important. (The site should probably help people to learn which type is appropriate and how to deliver that type well. Although this also probably varies per person and post, and so rather than trying to standardize it it may be better to just let people specify what sort of criticism they’re looking for on a per-post basis. Dunno)
I think that making each stage public will make people err on the side of getting their ideas out there sooner rather than later – right now I know a lot of smart people who sit on ideas for months or years because they’re worried about releasing them, and my sense is this is both because they’re worried about looking dumb, and because they’re worried about bad/wrong ideas taking hold. My hope is that making blogposts feel more like first drafts and making sure that only ideas that been pretty rigorously evaluated make it into Canon can help address both concerns.
Writing things that are clear does seem like a different skill from idea generation, and we’re hoping to develop both UI/functionality and general culture such that people get credit reinforcement for working together to develop ideas.
I think the single best example of the process I’m hoping for looks like Scott Garrabrant’s Goodheart Taxonomy post, where people crowdsourced examples that made the post much more clear, and then those changes were incorporated, and then later someone else reworked it into a formal paper. (In this case I think the paper version is less clear than the blogpost, I think because part of the deal was it was reworded to sound more academic, which I think is bad for clarity but good for looking rigorous/prestigious, which isn’t the part I want to capture on LessWrong, but is something that seems valuable for interfacing with the outside world, and regardless I was glad to see the collaborative process)
This is a good point. There are a lot more works with the potential to be cannon-worthy, then which immediately belong to the cannon. However, I do worry for the potential of something to be lost when someone other than the author transforms the work. Hopefully, the original author is willing to stay involved in the transformation, even if they don’t want to do it all themselves.