The first half of this comment feels like it’s making some kind of assumption that I was not holding. There are no requirements that any questions particularly relate to each other or that the effortposts should relate to what came before.
The second bit of “more effort might actually be shorter” / “the natural output might not be ‘an essay’” does seem significant. I think my current answer is “yep, but, I challenge you to do that and also output a 2500 word essay.”
I actually did something sorta-like this in my trial week. The output of the line of thinking I outlined in response to Kaj included both a ~2000 word post and also some attempts a good collection of diagrams and history-snippets with various nice UI features, where the writing was almost entirely AI generated.
I didn’t actually end up with a thing I was satisfied with (I was trying to do this during my week of obligatory Lightcone Team Inkhaven-ing, and the structure didn’t quite fit in a way that made it easy to finish). But, two attempts along the way were:
My concern about related things wasn’t about relating two effort posts, but rather different things in a single effort post. That is, perhaps I have 5 cool things, best described in 500 words—should I make a “Grabbag of stuff” post?
So obviously you might run an entirely different program than this, or a variation with different focuses.
But, my intent here was that you are not just forced to generate 500-word ideas, but also more complex 2500 word ideas.
I agree that often the best presentation of an idea is shorter. But, your grab-bag of stuff post should probably just get published piecemeal during 500-word daily writeups. The program’s intent is that along the two weeks, you are also thinking of idea-fragments that do build on each other such that the long post is a natural unit.
(That said, I think the rules of the program should not kick you out if you published a grab-bag effortpost. But, you should not go in with that intent, and should feel kinda embarrassed about it, in this context. It’s more like “the minimum before failing out”)
((I’m not sure 2500 is the right wordcount. Maybe actually it should be 1500, or it should be agnostic between writing one 3000 word post or 3 1000 word posts-in-a-sequence. But, I do think it’s correct for the program to push towards longform thinking. I think you will learn more about how to think overall if you think about ideas at different scales).
The first half of this comment feels like it’s making some kind of assumption that I was not holding. There are no requirements that any questions particularly relate to each other or that the effortposts should relate to what came before.
The second bit of “more effort might actually be shorter” / “the natural output might not be ‘an essay’” does seem significant. I think my current answer is “yep, but, I challenge you to do that and also output a 2500 word essay.”
I actually did something sorta-like this in my trial week. The output of the line of thinking I outlined in response to Kaj included both a ~2000 word post and also some attempts a good collection of diagrams and history-snippets with various nice UI features, where the writing was almost entirely AI generated.
I didn’t actually end up with a thing I was satisfied with (I was trying to do this during my week of obligatory Lightcone Team Inkhaven-ing, and the structure didn’t quite fit in a way that made it easy to finish). But, two attempts along the way were:
https://transformers-lineage.vercel.app/
https://ml-lineage.vercel.app
My concern about related things wasn’t about relating two effort posts, but rather different things in a single effort post. That is, perhaps I have 5 cool things, best described in 500 words—should I make a “Grabbag of stuff” post?
So obviously you might run an entirely different program than this, or a variation with different focuses.
But, my intent here was that you are not just forced to generate 500-word ideas, but also more complex 2500 word ideas.
I agree that often the best presentation of an idea is shorter. But, your grab-bag of stuff post should probably just get published piecemeal during 500-word daily writeups. The program’s intent is that along the two weeks, you are also thinking of idea-fragments that do build on each other such that the long post is a natural unit.
(That said, I think the rules of the program should not kick you out if you published a grab-bag effortpost. But, you should not go in with that intent, and should feel kinda embarrassed about it, in this context. It’s more like “the minimum before failing out”)
((I’m not sure 2500 is the right wordcount. Maybe actually it should be 1500, or it should be agnostic between writing one 3000 word post or 3 1000 word posts-in-a-sequence. But, I do think it’s correct for the program to push towards longform thinking. I think you will learn more about how to think overall if you think about ideas at different scales).
I liked the idea enough that I’m considering a lower expectation diy version of it for myself, and so wanted to think better about what to consider.
I certainly endorse you constructing the version of this that feels right for you and doing that!
I would ask “what are your goals here, more specifically?” as the first step to thinking about the actual parameters you wanna set.