It also really needs to start with some more concrete content. I’m not sure how interested I am that you’ve theorised about your experiences until I’m convinced there’s something of value in those experiences; and having your “core content” would really help with that.
If you’re writing a textbook about an established field, then you can afford to start with the theory; it may even be helpful, but in this case I think you should start at a lower level of abstraction.
(Upvoted) [Is it poor etiquette to say so? I recall seeing it in the past but I’m not familiar with online LW etiquette.]
Yeah, I think that’s a very good point. The things a model should be built on include actual uses of that model, some weight that it’s lifting. In this case I’m not actually sure that starting with the overview was not the way to go; it may well not have been, but many of the particular points draw from a larger model that might differ from some common beliefs, such as that people are intrinsically incoherent kludges or that our unconscious instincts can’t and don’t respond to subtle and genuinely important details in the world around us. If I included ideas like “Just about everything people do makes a fair deal of sense” in a concrete model without providing more information about that general claim—and that fact that it’s actually present throughout all of the ideas I’ve been using—I think it may be taken as an arbitrary and unjustified assumption, rather than something that’s come up time and time again in my attempts to understand what people are doing.
It also really needs to start with some more concrete content. I’m not sure how interested I am that you’ve theorised about your experiences until I’m convinced there’s something of value in those experiences; and having your “core content” would really help with that.
If you’re writing a textbook about an established field, then you can afford to start with the theory; it may even be helpful, but in this case I think you should start at a lower level of abstraction.
(Upvoted) [Is it poor etiquette to say so? I recall seeing it in the past but I’m not familiar with online LW etiquette.]
Yeah, I think that’s a very good point. The things a model should be built on include actual uses of that model, some weight that it’s lifting. In this case I’m not actually sure that starting with the overview was not the way to go; it may well not have been, but many of the particular points draw from a larger model that might differ from some common beliefs, such as that people are intrinsically incoherent kludges or that our unconscious instincts can’t and don’t respond to subtle and genuinely important details in the world around us. If I included ideas like “Just about everything people do makes a fair deal of sense” in a concrete model without providing more information about that general claim—and that fact that it’s actually present throughout all of the ideas I’ve been using—I think it may be taken as an arbitrary and unjustified assumption, rather than something that’s come up time and time again in my attempts to understand what people are doing.