I think a lot of your individual arguments are incorrect (e..g. $5000 is a steal for MetaMed’s product if they delivered what they promised. This includes promising only a 10% chance of success, if the problems are big enough).
I nonetheless agree with you that one should update downward on the chance of Balsa’s success due to the gestalt of information that has come out on Zvi and MetaMed (e.g. Zvi saying MetaMed was a definitive test of whether people cared about health or signaling care, while Sarah lays out a bunch of prosaic problems).
I think “we” is a bad framing as long as the project isn’t asking for small donor funding.
I do think grand vague plans with insufficient specifics (aka “goals”) are overrewarded on LW.
OTOH I have a (less) grand vague project that I’m referring to in other posts but not laying out in totality in its own post, specifically because of this, and I think that might be leaving value on the table in the form of lost feedback and potential collaborators. A way for me to lay out grand vague plans as “here’s what I’m working on”, but without making status claims that would need to be debunked, would be very useful.
OTTH it’s maybe fine or even good if I have to produce three object-level blog posts before I can lay out the grand vague goal.
But also it’s bad to discourage grand goals just because they haven’t reached the plan stage yet.
I’m torn because:
I think a lot of your individual arguments are incorrect (e..g. $5000 is a steal for MetaMed’s product if they delivered what they promised. This includes promising only a 10% chance of success, if the problems are big enough).
I nonetheless agree with you that one should update downward on the chance of Balsa’s success due to the gestalt of information that has come out on Zvi and MetaMed (e.g. Zvi saying MetaMed was a definitive test of whether people cared about health or signaling care, while Sarah lays out a bunch of prosaic problems).
I think “we” is a bad framing as long as the project isn’t asking for small donor funding.
I do think grand vague plans with insufficient specifics (aka “goals”) are overrewarded on LW.
OTOH I have a (less) grand vague project that I’m referring to in other posts but not laying out in totality in its own post, specifically because of this, and I think that might be leaving value on the table in the form of lost feedback and potential collaborators. A way for me to lay out grand vague plans as “here’s what I’m working on”, but without making status claims that would need to be debunked, would be very useful.
OTTH it’s maybe fine or even good if I have to produce three object-level blog posts before I can lay out the grand vague goal.
But also it’s bad to discourage grand goals just because they haven’t reached the plan stage yet.