In one of the recent Inkhaven writeups @habryka wrote something like “I believe good internet writing to be one of the highest leverage things in the world”
Curious about the mental models and evidence base behind this conviction. I’m often oscillating between “I should write way more” and “there’s already far too much internet writing on every conceivable topic, not to mention all the amazingly high-quality textbooks out there”. Or as the Russian saying goes “if you can not write, don’t”.
A lot of the best intellectuals I know don’t really engage with podcasts nor blog posts - (highly selected) books and academic papers just transmit way more high quality information per unit time.
There’s already far too much internet writing on every conceivable topic
Yes, but completely non-ironically, the vast majority of it is not worth reading. When I find a blog from an interesting thinker that I hadn’t encountered before, this is a cause for celebration, for me.
And some of the thoughtful internet writers seem to have ended up with really quite substantial influence. eg Eliezer, Scott Alexander, and Matt Yglesias, come to mind.
99.99% (maybe a few more nines) of internet writing is unimportant stuff that will be immediately forgotten.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a few articles that were read by lots of people, including a few important people, that have changed their minds on something as a consequence of reading the article.
Plus there is a layer below that, like maybe you will write an article that only a few dozen people will read, but one of them will be a popular writer like Scott Alexander, who will quote you and add a few opinions of his own, and that will be read by millions.
So I think it would make sense to write a little, but make it impactful. Although I have no idea how to achieve that, because impact requires lots of readers, and that requires you to publish regularly.
Another thing to consider is how much writing is a waste of time. If you comment on politics, it almost certainly is. But if you write about what you do professionally, then it’s a bit like making notes for yourself and for others. Books may be better, but how much time does it take you to write a book? And what kind of positive reinforcement do you get when you are in the middle of writing the book?
So this may depend on your position—if you are already employed as a well-paid expert on X, maybe take your time, and spend 5 years producing a book. If you have an important idea, and want to get it out right now, write a blog post. If you are an average guy doing something but good at writing, maybe keep writing a blog, it will increase your recognition and maybe you can convert it to a book later.
A lot of the best intellectuals I know don’t really engage with podcasts nor blog posts - (highly selected) books and academic papers are just transmit way more high quality information per unit time.
I wonder if one wants to speak to intellectuals instead of important decision-makers[1], the latter have less time and more focus on reading easy-to-read things. Presumably there’s also a sliding scale of how far outside of one’s native network the things one writes reach, but it can be pretty far.
Even intellectuals do read random high-quality blogs though, I think? Especially on things that academia doesn’t really touch or can’t touch because it’s not quite an LPU. There is, of course, tons of writing, but a lot of it is concentrated in specific topics—there’s possibly six orders of magnitude more writing on What Donald Trump Did Yesterday than on methods for increasing subjective lifespan. I don’t necessarily advocate for writing more, but if one finds it easy then the value of information of trying a bit looks large enough to outweigh the costs.
Who I’m pretty sure do read blogs, e.g. Vance alluding to Scott Alexander’s Gay Rites are Civil Rites or having read AI 2027, the influence of the Industrial Party on (some) PRC policy despite being mostly a group of online nerds, the fact that Musk reads Gwern, SSC, the fact that so much current SV AI company culture is downstream of the 00s transhumanists, specifically Yudkowsky…
In one of the recent Inkhaven writeups @habryka wrote something like “I believe good internet writing to be one of the highest leverage things in the world”
Curious about the mental models and evidence base behind this conviction. I’m often oscillating between “I should write way more” and “there’s already far too much internet writing on every conceivable topic, not to mention all the amazingly high-quality textbooks out there”. Or as the Russian saying goes “if you can not write, don’t”.
A lot of the best intellectuals I know don’t really engage with podcasts nor blog posts - (highly selected) books and academic papers just transmit way more high quality information per unit time.
Yes, but completely non-ironically, the vast majority of it is not worth reading. When I find a blog from an interesting thinker that I hadn’t encountered before, this is a cause for celebration, for me.
And some of the thoughtful internet writers seem to have ended up with really quite substantial influence. eg Eliezer, Scott Alexander, and Matt Yglesias, come to mind.
99.99% (maybe a few more nines) of internet writing is unimportant stuff that will be immediately forgotten.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a few articles that were read by lots of people, including a few important people, that have changed their minds on something as a consequence of reading the article.
Plus there is a layer below that, like maybe you will write an article that only a few dozen people will read, but one of them will be a popular writer like Scott Alexander, who will quote you and add a few opinions of his own, and that will be read by millions.
So I think it would make sense to write a little, but make it impactful. Although I have no idea how to achieve that, because impact requires lots of readers, and that requires you to publish regularly.
Another thing to consider is how much writing is a waste of time. If you comment on politics, it almost certainly is. But if you write about what you do professionally, then it’s a bit like making notes for yourself and for others. Books may be better, but how much time does it take you to write a book? And what kind of positive reinforcement do you get when you are in the middle of writing the book?
So this may depend on your position—if you are already employed as a well-paid expert on X, maybe take your time, and spend 5 years producing a book. If you have an important idea, and want to get it out right now, write a blog post. If you are an average guy doing something but good at writing, maybe keep writing a blog, it will increase your recognition and maybe you can convert it to a book later.
I wonder if one wants to speak to intellectuals instead of important decision-makers [1] , the latter have less time and more focus on reading easy-to-read things. Presumably there’s also a sliding scale of how far outside of one’s native network the things one writes reach, but it can be pretty far.
Even intellectuals do read random high-quality blogs though, I think? Especially on things that academia doesn’t really touch or can’t touch because it’s not quite an LPU. There is, of course, tons of writing, but a lot of it is concentrated in specific topics—there’s possibly six orders of magnitude more writing on What Donald Trump Did Yesterday than on methods for increasing subjective lifespan. I don’t necessarily advocate for writing more, but if one finds it easy then the value of information of trying a bit looks large enough to outweigh the costs.
Who I’m pretty sure do read blogs, e.g. Vance alluding to Scott Alexander’s Gay Rites are Civil Rites or having read AI 2027, the influence of the Industrial Party on (some) PRC policy despite being mostly a group of online nerds, the fact that Musk reads Gwern, SSC, the fact that so much current SV AI company culture is downstream of the 00s transhumanists, specifically Yudkowsky…