Janet, I don’t know if you’re just nervous, or rushed, or what, but the writing quality of your comments is a lot better than the writing quality of this article. In your comments, you number your points, you use a grammatically active voice, and you say what you mean.
In this article, you have long paragraphs, some of which don’t have any kind of transition from one to the next. You preface most of your points with disclaimers and generalities, and you use a lot of passive voice.
I suggest you rewrite this article, paying a little more attention to style! You might have something really cool to say here; I just can’t tell because it’s so hard to read.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m not voting your article up or down yet.
I would appreciate some concrete examples. I have not spent much time writing any of my comments but I did re-write the post several times. I may have over done the editing. Indeed I have disclaimers and generalities, probably way too many, and I could remove some. I could make the sentences easier etc. I notice that people are careful about editing—is there a particular way that I should mark the edits?
I’d second the suggestion to re-draft the article; it’s not clear what this should mean in term of marking up changes. If it’s going to take a while you might want to add a brief notice at the front “I’m rewriting this, please help me in the comments”. Or you might prefer to post a “Take 2″ later—that gives you a better shot at grabbing people’s attention.
The first para has to go, it’s way too apologetic and sort of sends “don’t read” signals. You want to do the opposite—start by establishing relevance, saying why the reader should be interested in what you have to say. What is wrong with our current understanding of consciousness, that your post proposes to clear up? Be as specific as possible.
(For instance, if I were to post about consciousness, I might start by noting how strong and yet how misleading the feeling of unity of consciousness is, and bring out what I’ve learned about the patchwork nature of the human mind.)
The discussion of what you mean by certain words is secondary to establishing relevance; if it is absolutely required, make it a footnote. Also, as it is is that second para segues from being about words to being about the objects; the last three sentences appear to start on the main thesis.
I got lost at the sentence that started “That edit of the model...” What is an edit in this context? What does the word “that” in “that edit” refer back to? That was totally unclear to me. (Also, if there is a word that probably wanted defining, it was “model” rather than “brain”. And later: what is a “frame” of consciousness?)
Why is writing that post important to you? What, in a nutshell, are you trying to say? (It may take a whole post to support it, but it should take fewer words to get the main point across, or at least to convey that there is a point to be made.)
Thank you for your specific arrows to where I was not explaining myself well—most helpful.
The reason that it is so easy to see movies as smoothly continuous is that consciousness is comprised by a train of frames. I believe there is good evidence for this.
I am using a ordinary meaning of ‘model’. As in ‘this is a working model of a steam engine’ or ‘this stimulation models Heath Row airport’. Some researchers call it the ‘global workspace’, others call it the ‘Cartesian theatre’. The mind does maintain a model of the self in its environment. I believe there is also good evidence for this.
By’ edit’ I mean that the frames of consciousness are derived from the model but are not the whole of it, but rather much smaller chunks. Edit seemed a good word, maybe excerpt would have been better.
I have no firm evident for this, but I believe that there is a great deal of unity in many processes of mind. It is consciousness itself that has a false sense of unity and continuity.
I liked the first paragraph after the first sentence.
I also liked the early defining of words, and wish this was more of a norm here.
Your suggestions about big picture relevance and importance are good. I would put forward that she could do a bit less extensive rewriting, depending on how much she feels like doing.
I think this comment is a bit melodramatic. Janet’s writing voice here is different, and she made some specific mistakes, but it’s not the end of the world. Perhaps writing this post used a different part of her brain that is less integrated with the practice of writing. (I hope this is not offending, I find in myself that the part of my brain in charge of pulling information is not as good at describing it.) She can easily fix some specific things.
Dear reader, please give me your tolerance, patience and an open mind.
Addressing the reader directly is difficult to pull off properly. I can hunt down the post where someone else did this and find the comments about that. (..sorry, couldn’t find it) I think the problem is that it assumes too much intimacy, so it’s a reflexive thing for people to then want to be critical.
Now that you’ve written the post, a summary at the beginning and a little more organization (brief intermediate summaries and possibly bullet points) could bring it together and reduce the apparent choppiness. (Actually, unless you’ve edited it since I first read it, I just noticed that’s it’s very organized. There’s a couple introductory paragraph, a series of Q&A paragraphs, three processes described, then concluding paragraphs. Simply bolding the questions may be useful to highlight the organization.)
I don’t think you need to keep track of all your edits as long as they’re just stylistic. I like Morendil’s idea of the brief notice that you are working on editing the post.
I’d suggest adding a few comparisons to others’ writings on the subject. For example, your discussion of “attention focus” leaves me puzzled, but if you compared your views on the subject to those of Crick and Koch I could probably get it. On other points, perhaps you could link to some posts on Less Wrong that readers might be familiar with. For example, if there is a particular hypothesis of Academician’s that supports, or receives support from, one of your points, mention that.
Janet, I don’t know if you’re just nervous, or rushed, or what, but the writing quality of your comments is a lot better than the writing quality of this article. In your comments, you number your points, you use a grammatically active voice, and you say what you mean.
In this article, you have long paragraphs, some of which don’t have any kind of transition from one to the next. You preface most of your points with disclaimers and generalities, and you use a lot of passive voice.
I suggest you rewrite this article, paying a little more attention to style! You might have something really cool to say here; I just can’t tell because it’s so hard to read.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m not voting your article up or down yet.
I would appreciate some concrete examples. I have not spent much time writing any of my comments but I did re-write the post several times. I may have over done the editing. Indeed I have disclaimers and generalities, probably way too many, and I could remove some. I could make the sentences easier etc. I notice that people are careful about editing—is there a particular way that I should mark the edits?
I’d second the suggestion to re-draft the article; it’s not clear what this should mean in term of marking up changes. If it’s going to take a while you might want to add a brief notice at the front “I’m rewriting this, please help me in the comments”. Or you might prefer to post a “Take 2″ later—that gives you a better shot at grabbing people’s attention.
The first para has to go, it’s way too apologetic and sort of sends “don’t read” signals. You want to do the opposite—start by establishing relevance, saying why the reader should be interested in what you have to say. What is wrong with our current understanding of consciousness, that your post proposes to clear up? Be as specific as possible.
(For instance, if I were to post about consciousness, I might start by noting how strong and yet how misleading the feeling of unity of consciousness is, and bring out what I’ve learned about the patchwork nature of the human mind.)
The discussion of what you mean by certain words is secondary to establishing relevance; if it is absolutely required, make it a footnote. Also, as it is is that second para segues from being about words to being about the objects; the last three sentences appear to start on the main thesis.
I got lost at the sentence that started “That edit of the model...” What is an edit in this context? What does the word “that” in “that edit” refer back to? That was totally unclear to me. (Also, if there is a word that probably wanted defining, it was “model” rather than “brain”. And later: what is a “frame” of consciousness?)
Why is writing that post important to you? What, in a nutshell, are you trying to say? (It may take a whole post to support it, but it should take fewer words to get the main point across, or at least to convey that there is a point to be made.)
Thank you for your specific arrows to where I was not explaining myself well—most helpful.
The reason that it is so easy to see movies as smoothly continuous is that consciousness is comprised by a train of frames. I believe there is good evidence for this.
I am using a ordinary meaning of ‘model’. As in ‘this is a working model of a steam engine’ or ‘this stimulation models Heath Row airport’. Some researchers call it the ‘global workspace’, others call it the ‘Cartesian theatre’. The mind does maintain a model of the self in its environment. I believe there is also good evidence for this.
By’ edit’ I mean that the frames of consciousness are derived from the model but are not the whole of it, but rather much smaller chunks. Edit seemed a good word, maybe excerpt would have been better.
I have no firm evident for this, but I believe that there is a great deal of unity in many processes of mind. It is consciousness itself that has a false sense of unity and continuity.
I liked the first paragraph after the first sentence.
I also liked the early defining of words, and wish this was more of a norm here.
Your suggestions about big picture relevance and importance are good. I would put forward that she could do a bit less extensive rewriting, depending on how much she feels like doing.
I think this comment is a bit melodramatic. Janet’s writing voice here is different, and she made some specific mistakes, but it’s not the end of the world. Perhaps writing this post used a different part of her brain that is less integrated with the practice of writing. (I hope this is not offending, I find in myself that the part of my brain in charge of pulling information is not as good at describing it.) She can easily fix some specific things.
Addressing the reader directly is difficult to pull off properly. I can hunt down the post where someone else did this and find the comments about that. (..sorry, couldn’t find it) I think the problem is that it assumes too much intimacy, so it’s a reflexive thing for people to then want to be critical.
Now that you’ve written the post, a summary at the beginning and a little more organization (brief intermediate summaries and possibly bullet points) could bring it together and reduce the apparent choppiness. (Actually, unless you’ve edited it since I first read it, I just noticed that’s it’s very organized. There’s a couple introductory paragraph, a series of Q&A paragraphs, three processes described, then concluding paragraphs. Simply bolding the questions may be useful to highlight the organization.)
I don’t think you need to keep track of all your edits as long as they’re just stylistic. I like Morendil’s idea of the brief notice that you are working on editing the post.
I’d suggest adding a few comparisons to others’ writings on the subject. For example, your discussion of “attention focus” leaves me puzzled, but if you compared your views on the subject to those of Crick and Koch I could probably get it. On other points, perhaps you could link to some posts on Less Wrong that readers might be familiar with. For example, if there is a particular hypothesis of Academician’s that supports, or receives support from, one of your points, mention that.