Folks commenting here might want to look at this post from April 2020, Blogging is dead, long live sites, which I found in one of Tyler Cowen’s link posts. The author starts of discussing the blogosphere, which he claims peaked in 2009, then moves on to essays vs. blogposts. and ends with independent vs. academic scholarship:
A lot of the sites I list in the accordion above are by part-time autodidacts, or retired scholars. I suppose this is because the incentives in academia are so often towards either small publons or giant monographs, each of which are set in stone once done. (Unless they are grossly flawed enough to trigger academia’s slow, dumb immune system.) (Or my search process is biased towards lone wolves.)
But the average academic work is more lasting than the average internet work. But it isn’t only durability we’re after. But it’s also more rigorous than the average internet work.
Robin Hanson has spotted a trend among independent scholars, a systematic bias against rigour, and so against durability.
“over time amateurs blow their lead by focusing less and relying on easier, more direct methods. They rely more on informal conversation as analysis method, they prefer personal connections over open competitions in choosing people, and they rely more on a perceived consensus among a smaller group of fellow enthusiasts. As a result, their contributions just don’t appeal as widely or as long.”
Take Hanson himself: he has about 100 academic publications, two big books, and something like 3000 blog posts. Which will be his biggest contribution in the end?
Maybe tenured academics are the people best placed to do long content: lots of time, lots of connections, some pressure towards rigour and communicability. But you should be able to do it outside uni, if you’re wary.
Take Hanson himself: he has about 100 academic publications, two big books, and something like 3000 blog posts. Which will be his biggest contribution in the end?
Is this a trick question? Obviously the blog posts. The em book (based heavily on blog drafts) had zero impact and is based on a vision of the future that recedes every day (if it’s lucky, it might get revived in a few decades as period science fiction), and the co-authored Elephant book was just a popularization of the blog posts. The academic publications may look prestigious but let’s be real: not 1 person in 100 majorly affected by Robin Hanson could tell you the name or date of his first prediction market article, what market-maker mechanism he invented (not that the cryptocurrency guys would’ve cared where he wrote it up), anything about combinatorial auctions (which still largely don’t exist), what his theory of medical economics is, what his formal model of singularity economics says (you can tell because no one is bringing it up now despite being quite relevant to DL macro), and… I have no idea what the rest of those 100 papers might cover even though I really ought to because I’ve been reading all his stuff for almost 20 years now.
I see what you mean. Hanson himself may not be a good example of the argument the author is making. What about the point Hanson himself was making in the quoted passage? Hanson himself does accept the discipline of publishing in the formal literature and he also uses his blog posts as a vehicle for developing more disciplined ideas. Blogging is one thing when it is part of a larger intellectual strategy. But if blogging – & Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and whatever else – is all there is, what happens to rigor then?
Folks commenting here might want to look at this post from April 2020, Blogging is dead, long live sites, which I found in one of Tyler Cowen’s link posts. The author starts of discussing the blogosphere, which he claims peaked in 2009, then moves on to essays vs. blogposts. and ends with independent vs. academic scholarship:
Is this a trick question? Obviously the blog posts. The em book (based heavily on blog drafts) had zero impact and is based on a vision of the future that recedes every day (if it’s lucky, it might get revived in a few decades as period science fiction), and the co-authored Elephant book was just a popularization of the blog posts. The academic publications may look prestigious but let’s be real: not 1 person in 100 majorly affected by Robin Hanson could tell you the name or date of his first prediction market article, what market-maker mechanism he invented (not that the cryptocurrency guys would’ve cared where he wrote it up), anything about combinatorial auctions (which still largely don’t exist), what his theory of medical economics is, what his formal model of singularity economics says (you can tell because no one is bringing it up now despite being quite relevant to DL macro), and… I have no idea what the rest of those 100 papers might cover even though I really ought to because I’ve been reading all his stuff for almost 20 years now.
I see what you mean. Hanson himself may not be a good example of the argument the author is making. What about the point Hanson himself was making in the quoted passage? Hanson himself does accept the discipline of publishing in the formal literature and he also uses his blog posts as a vehicle for developing more disciplined ideas. Blogging is one thing when it is part of a larger intellectual strategy. But if blogging – & Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and whatever else – is all there is, what happens to rigor then?