Wikipedia also has Short descriptions which I personally find to be extremely useful—maybe we could implement something similar here for highly linked-to posts?
As the guy who originally wrote the “maybe we should have fewer hyperlinks or be careful with them?” post… for the record I have changed my views on this.
While I think there is a cost of LW having lots of hyperlinks… I also think it’s just overall better to have people plunge through the rabbithole and get caught up on all the important site concepts.
(I think it’s good to have a read-only-without-tabsplosion option, but I mostly think the going through a tabsplosion phase is helpful for people actually being able to contribute to LW state-of-the-art discussion for rationality and alignment)
Yeah. It’s maybe an unfortunate fact that the amount of stuff grows over time, but you will definitely hit a point where you’ve made it through the backlog.
the less readable your posts become because the brain must make a decision with each link whether to click it for more information or keep reading. After several of these links, your brain starts to take on more cognitive load
I don’t think it’s reasonable to try to avoid the cognitive load of deciding whether to investigate subclaims or follow up on interesting ledes while reading. I think it’s a crucial impulse for critical thinking and research and we have to have it well in hand.
What do you think of gwern.net style popups with summaries as a solution?
Wikipedia also has Short descriptions which I personally find to be extremely useful—maybe we could implement something similar here for highly linked-to posts?
As the guy who originally wrote the “maybe we should have fewer hyperlinks or be careful with them?” post… for the record I have changed my views on this.
While I think there is a cost of LW having lots of hyperlinks… I also think it’s just overall better to have people plunge through the rabbithole and get caught up on all the important site concepts.
(I think it’s good to have a read-only-without-tabsplosion option, but I mostly think the going through a tabsplosion phase is helpful for people actually being able to contribute to LW state-of-the-art discussion for rationality and alignment)
.
Yeah. It’s maybe an unfortunate fact that the amount of stuff grows over time, but you will definitely hit a point where you’ve made it through the backlog.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to try to avoid the cognitive load of deciding whether to investigate subclaims or follow up on interesting ledes while reading. I think it’s a crucial impulse for critical thinking and research and we have to have it well in hand.