I’m Georgia. I crosspost some of my writings from eukaryotewritesblog.com.
eukaryote
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Eukaryote Skips Town—Why I’m leaving DC
Advice: The AI-generated diagram here doesn’t add anything and in fact indicates strongly that I wouldn’t want to read the post. One of the things about diagrams being so important and eye-catching associated with writing is that they communicate information, so if a diagram is clearly half-assed and wrong, it makes one assume that the text is too. (Half-assed is maybe not the word—minimally-assed? MS Paint stick figures would be fine here, for instance.)
There’s extraneous detail. The text is garbled and irrelevant.
I think if you use image-generating AI to make diagrams you should then edit it afterwards to make sure it’s actually, like, good and represents what you wanted, and add your own captions.
That’s definitely a good point and model vis-a-vis “this group/ideology is targeting these people specifically”.
I would also point out that specifically rejecting demographically-vulnerable people is likely to push more of them towards this ideology—though even if that effect weren’t in play, it would still be shitty to tarnish a broad group of generally fine community members by common demographic.
I think this is a horrible thing to say. The murderers are associated with each other; that gives you much more information than just knowing that someone is trans or not. There are many, many stellar trans rationalists. I’m thinking you maybe are thinking of the standout dramatic cases you’ve heard of and don’t know a lot of trans people to provide a baseline.
I don’t disagree with you about not wanting to read LLM output, but:
> Everyone in Cyborgism or AI Twitter or LW who talks a lot about talking a lot to LLMs for generic conversation, rather than specific tasks, seems to lose their edge and ability to think critically
- is a very strong claim to just throw out there. Everyone? Are you sure you’re not remembering the people who stand out and confirm your theory? You’re getting that they’re (for twitter users) “losing their edge and ability to think critically” from, like, tweets?
I’d suggest writing about stuff you’re interested in but that don’t feel crucial to get right, if that makes sense. A hobby, fiction, stories from your life, about your day, funny observations...
If you don’t have any other interests and just have to write about unimportant boring stuff—hey, yeah, sure, polish turds. I’m reading Ulysses right now and it’s, like, mythologizing some guys going around their everyday lives and drinking and being casually rude. And it’s one of the most beloved novels ever. Writing about boring everyday bullshit in ways that sound cool is a time-honored tradition.
Well, okay, you can also start writing about things you really care about—but I feel like there’s a kind of person who might read this who, like, has a thing they really care about—“we need to develop more mRNA vaccines”, maybe—and is going to write a mid essay about mRNA vaccines, and then they’ll sadly think “well, nobody liked that essay,” and never go back to it—and that would be sad. So if you’re going to practice via writing things that are very important to you, you might have to be willing to write on the same topic/thesis a few times.
(Also, if a person in your audience reads one essay from you and doesn’t like it, they might not be willing to read a second essay from you on the same topic even if it’s better now—so you might also want to show different iterations to different audiences, if your potential audience isn’t large. YMMV.)
Yeah, so I bet passive osmosis has in fact gotten you somewhere, but to go a bit beyond that -
Can you identify when you’re reading writing you like vs. writing you don’t like?
What’s the difference?
What kind of properties does writing you like have, compared to other writing? (Especially compared to writing that’s “just okay”, as opposed to actively bad)
Can you recreate these in your own writing?
What effect does good writing have on you? (This is sort of an art more than a science, but like—do you understand the thing better? Do certain sentences just like really hit you? What’s going on there?)
Okay, hm, interesting. (If I do write a “how to write good” post it’ll probably be more general + kind of aimed at people with different problems than yours, like not writing enough, so I’ll give this a shot now.)
Obviously I don’t know what you’ve tried already and it seems like you have tried some things (I looked up Dionysian Imitatio and was like “I think this person already knows more about writing methods than me”, haha), so apologies if these ideas are completely off the mark -
Questions and people misinterpreting you
In addition to asking the question, add a sentence or two of why you’re asking (or what you’ll do with the answer). This might help people give you more relevant info.
If people don’t know the answer to your question, they might just say Some Stuff in hopes it helps, so maybe give an explicit out in the form of “It’s okay if you don’t know” or something in case this is the issue. (Also, ask yourself if they’re likely to know the answer to the thing you’re asking them about. If you don’t think they will, you can still ask, but expect a worse or more irrelevant result.)
In case you don’t do this already: for shorter feedback loops, write in low-stakes forms where people can and will read it—lesswrong or other forums, social media posts, chats, fanfic, comics, whatever; calibrate on people’s response to that. (Obviously the style of writing might not be what you’re ultimately aiming for, but maybe there are consistent ways you’re not coming across clearly, in which case this will help you find those and workshop correcting for them.)
Conciseness
HUGE mood re: being concise, haha. Rounds of editing helps. You might try “challenge rounds” of editing where you try to make the thing absolutely as short as possible, or go in with the intent of writing the thing very directly. (And then you can add more back in if you like, but getting it there can be a good exercise.)
Voice
I think a lot of people struggle with writing voice, and there are guides out there on this. I don’t run into this problem with nonfiction so much, but I do think about it with fiction, so maybe some of this will help:
Play around with it, try out leaning into extremes. Write something in a style that is maximally silly, or that is poetic to the point of being esoteric, etc. (Writing things that you don’t “need to” write—things that are interesting to you but don’t feel crucial to communicate—can help here, just in terms of giving you mental wiggle room.)
I find that my metaphors and like use of language change after reading or writing stuff with strong voice—so you might try, I don’t know, reading authors that have voices you like, or writing fiction or poetry that is metaphor-heavy, etc, to develop the taste for that.
If you can’t write with the voice you want in the first place, schlockily edited-in is fine. Like, write a full draft. Maybe you go “this is bad, this doesn’t have as much description as I’d like.” Bold at least 5 spots throughout the piece where you think you could add some visual description. Write em in. Reread it and see if you like that better.
Structure
Think about the reader experience.
Think about the process you want the reader to go through. FOR INSTANCE:
News article style: start with the most important thing, add more stuff in descending order of importance
Make some points of reasoning step by step. Lay out several facts/assumptions and then arrive at a conclusion.
Explain that you will be offering a list of unconnected ideas, then do that.
A story told in temporal order, giving more details in the most interesting or relevant parts.
...Or something else, a combination, etc, etc. The point is, go in with a strategy.
In most writing, the default is that people won’t read a thing. So you want to hook them and make something that’s nice to read.
Some things that help with this: on an interesting topic, phrased in an interesting way, starts with something surprising, easy-to-follow reasoning, has jokes, is short.
Also, don’t assume the reader will read to the end.
Making an outline and expanding out from it can help a lot to keep you on track, I do this especially with longer form stuff
😅 You know, I was thinking of calling it “Learn to write good BEFORE you have something worth saying”, but figured I’d get some people rolling their eyes at the grammar of “write good” in a post purporting to offer writing advice. This would however have disambiguated the point you mentioned, which I hadn’t thought about. Really goes to show you something or other.
Hm, let me think if I can come up with advice for you. What kind of problems do you run into when you start trying to express these things? (Or if more applicable, what’s wrong with the finished product?)
That is definitely true and the title is being a little clickbaity about it, but my thinking is: the kind of person I’m imagining is going around thinking “I don’t need to practice writing, I’ll just wait til I figure out The Answer and it’ll be fine” and I’m trying to convince them that they’ll still want to be good at writing even once they know The Answer.
Learn to write well BEFORE you have something worth saying
Post that made me pack a suit for Solstice
Yeah, agree. (Also agree with Dagon in not having an existing expectation of strong privacy in LW DMs. Weak privacy, yes, like that mods wouldn’t read messages as a matter of course.)
Here’s how I would think to implement this unintrusively: little ℹ️-type icon on a top corner of the screen of the DM interface screen (or to the side of the “Conversation with XYZ” header, or something.) When you click on that icon, it toggles a writeup about circumstances in which information from the message might be sent to someone else (what information and who.)
Fair enough. You did write
It might actually be essential that we try to divide people by sex wherever sexual dynamics can meaningfully affect a group’s functionality.
and
But gosh, you know what would work really well to fix this?
which made it sound like you thought this would be a good idea.
Didn’t like the post then, still don’t like it in 2024. I think there are defensible points interwoven with assumptions and stereotypes.
First: generalizes from personal experiences that are not universal. I think a lot of people don’t have this or don’t struggle with this or find it worth it, and the piece assumes everyone feels the way the author feels.
Second: the thing it describes is a bias, and I don’t think the essay realizes this.
Okay, part of the thing is that this doesn’t make a case or acknowledge this romantic factor as being different from, like, friendship. Like, in the people-at-work case, you might also do someone a favor at work because you like them as a buddy, which is not necessarily the same as whether they’re a good worker or it’s a strategic thing for you to do, or whatever—you’re inclined to give your friends special treatment. Even in straight same-gender groups, people will end up being friends and having outgroups.
Anyway, you have to be careful reasoning out of “what your in-built stereotypes say”. This is sometimes relevant information, totally. But A) your in-built stereotypes are not everyone else’s in-built stereotypes, even within your culture, and B) this is reasoning from the territory, not the map. Are they true? In some of the cases given in this piece, it matters if they’re true.
Like, the thing being described here is a bias, a flaw in the lens. “Having to navigate around possible sexual dynamics with other people makes it harder to do regular communication with them” is a thing that’ll make you less able to reason and less effective. (Especially if it still fires strongly in cases like “this woman is at this event about an unrelated topic, with a partner, and so is probably not available for dating.”) I don’t begrudge the author for having it. I think it’s really common. God knows my own best judgment has failed me before in the face of very pretty people.
But I like this community for usually not giving up on matters of self-improvement and epistemics. Even if you don’t prioritize it, you’re at least recognizing it and not throwing it out. It’s very disconcerting to read “I notice my brain does extra work when I talk with women… wouldn’t it be easier if society were radically altered so that I didn’t have to talk with women?” Like, what? And there’s no way you or anyone else can become more rational about this? This barrier to ideal communication with 50% of people is insurmountable? It’s worth giving up on this one? Hello?
I get that the author views this as sort of a series of tenuous hypotheticals and doesn’t necessarily stand by these stances and was just putting it out there, which is respectable. I think it’s wrong and so tenuous as to be unhelpful.Overall: bad takes, did have a solid 20 seconds of mixed fun and horror imagining this totally-unsexist society where straight men and women are kept in polite segregated groups, and 10% of people are in fringe situations—stable lesbian gay-male duos who must rely on each other, the bisexuals and the nonbinary people wandering the earth alone, the asexuals reigning supreme; incorruptible, masters of all domains.
This was just a really good post. It starts off imaginative and on something I’d never really thought about—hey, spring shoes are a great idea, or at least the dream of them is. It looks at different ways this has sort have been implemented, checks assumptions, and goes down to the basic physics of it, and then explores some related ideas. I like someone who’s just interested in a very specific thing exploring the idea critically from different angles and from the underlying principles. I want to read more posts like this. I also, now, want shoes with springs on them.
Mostly saying the same thing twice, a rhetorical flourish. I guess just really doubling down on how this is not good, in case the reader was like “well this sucks incredibly but maybe there’s a good upside” and then got to the second part and was like “ah no I see now it is genuinely bad”, or vice versa.
Good point!
Delightful! I DO enjoy knowing that!