In the case of communication on Less Wrong, I think it’s a (relatively) achievable goal to have people communicate their ideas clearly without having to filter them through “what will people understand?” (and if people don’t understand your ideas, you can resolve the issue by taking a step back and explaining things in more detail)
The sort of issue that prompted this post was things more like “People in the EA posting infographics or advertisements that are [probably true / true-ish but depend on certain assumptions / not strictly true but fleshing out all the details would dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the advertisements, not because of falsehoods but because then you’ve turned a short, punchy phrase into a meandering paragraph]”
i.e. Less Wrong is a place to talk about things in exhaustive depth, but as soon as your ideas start interfacing with the rest of the world you need to start thinking about how to handle that sort of thing
I think I’m worried that people that have to interface with the outside world cannot interact with a weird/blunt lesswrong, as they need to keep up their normal/polite promoting behaviour. It is not like the rest of the world can’t see in here or that they will respect this as a place for weirdness/bluntness. There is a reputational price of “Guilt by association” for those interfacing with the outside world.
In the case of communication on Less Wrong, I think it’s a (relatively) achievable goal to have people communicate their ideas clearly without having to filter them through “what will people understand?” (and if people don’t understand your ideas, you can resolve the issue by taking a step back and explaining things in more detail)
The sort of issue that prompted this post was things more like “People in the EA posting infographics or advertisements that are [probably true / true-ish but depend on certain assumptions / not strictly true but fleshing out all the details would dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the advertisements, not because of falsehoods but because then you’ve turned a short, punchy phrase into a meandering paragraph]”
i.e. Less Wrong is a place to talk about things in exhaustive depth, but as soon as your ideas start interfacing with the rest of the world you need to start thinking about how to handle that sort of thing
I think I’m worried that people that have to interface with the outside world cannot interact with a weird/blunt lesswrong, as they need to keep up their normal/polite promoting behaviour. It is not like the rest of the world can’t see in here or that they will respect this as a place for weirdness/bluntness. There is a reputational price of “Guilt by association” for those interfacing with the outside world.