probably the primary thing I’d suggest would be trying to organize the post progressive-jpeg-style: try to fit as much as possible as early as possible, so that it becomes clear quickly why your post is relevant-or-not for a given reader. also just, try to compress as much as you can.
This is a fair point and in some cases it’s not too much additional cognitive load to structure things this way. I have noticed though that it can be ”...complex enough for me to make the associations I’ve made and distill them into a narrative that makes sense to me. I can’t one-shot a narrative that lands broadly”. Other times the fun and the motivation in writing is from crafting the narrative creatively. If narratives have to follow line by line then we wouldn’t get things like Infinite Jest.
A low-cost idea I had that could help: folks who get their post or comment downvoted could receive a message linking back to the New User’s Guide to LessWrong but mainly up-front highlighting that these contra-contrarian forces exist, and “If you’ve been downvoted and/or rate-limited, don’t take it too hard. LessWrong has fairly particular standards. My recommendation is to read some of the advice at the end here and try again.”[1]
I’ve spoken with multiple smart rationalist people in person who have described being discouraged from writing on LessWrong because of echo chamber effects / imbalanced curation.
Thank you for sharing your expert insight!
This is a fair point and in some cases it’s not too much additional cognitive load to structure things this way. I have noticed though that it can be ”...complex enough for me to make the associations I’ve made and distill them into a narrative that makes sense to me. I can’t one-shot a narrative that lands broadly”. Other times the fun and the motivation in writing is from crafting the narrative creatively. If narratives have to follow line by line then we wouldn’t get things like Infinite Jest.
A low-cost idea I had that could help: folks who get their post or comment downvoted could receive a message linking back to the New User’s Guide to LessWrong but mainly up-front highlighting that these contra-contrarian forces exist, and “If you’ve been downvoted and/or rate-limited, don’t take it too hard. LessWrong has fairly particular standards. My recommendation is to read some of the advice at the end here and try again.”[1]
I’ve spoken with multiple smart rationalist people in person who have described being discouraged from writing on LessWrong because of echo chamber effects / imbalanced curation.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hHyYph9CcYfdnoC5j/automatic-rate-limiting-on-lesswrong