My approach is that I’m a blog writer and not a dating consultant. My main goal is for my readers to enjoy what they are reading even if the topic isn’t at the top of their interests. People who know nothing at all about soccer (like Scott Alexander) and certainly don’t work in soccer development seemed to enjoy the Tails of Great Soccer Players series.
I see your comment as actually encouraging my style: people who care about the advice will dig a bit to isolate the tips, people who don’t care about it will spend a fun 5 minutes and have a few chuckles. Do you think the writing would be better if it was more structured (i.e. adding an intro and conclusion with a clear list of tips)?
P.S.
The day I start writing listicles, take me behind the shed a put a bullet in me.
I certainly don’t write well enough to be considered “porn” :)
It’s true that my blog doesn’t have a terminal value outside itself, although I will occasionally write about Effective Altruism topics.My goal is to have a popular blog with a lively discussion, my blog will be popular if people enjoy my writing. That’s the goal in itself, I am not planning to turn it into a source of income or anything like that.
Different people enjoy vastly different things: I am getting overwhelmingly positive response on LessWrong, and overwhelmingly negative response on Reddit. That’s a good thing: like a dating profile my goal is to find my specific audience and not write universal clickbait, and LW is definitely the audience I aspire to have.
To apply to a LW audience, I’m trying to:
Come up with genuine insights based on analysis rather than repeat common wisdom that’s based on sounding plausible.
Be always willing to learn and be corrected, including offering a reward for people finding major errors in my posts. One person has deserved it so far for pointing out a serious factual mistake that I fell for because of confirmation bias.
Show my math. If you don’t want to see me calculate the influence of outliers on a regression slope, the blog isn’t for you ;) If I can’t do the math myself, I won’t take someone else’s word for it.
Puns.
The above list is very different from what would apply to 90% of my Facebook friends, for example, and I’m OK with it. If I wanted 100,000 shares, I would write “27 ways how Bernie is actually a lot like Batman and Trump is like Lex Luthor”.
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read
Do you think the writing would be better if it was more structured
Not really, but I think I would have enjoyed more technical details. I understand that this would have made your writing less universally appealing, it’s just that the topic is quite dear to me and I can’t seem to read enough stuff on the subject.
I get what you’re saying.
My approach is that I’m a blog writer and not a dating consultant. My main goal is for my readers to enjoy what they are reading even if the topic isn’t at the top of their interests. People who know nothing at all about soccer (like Scott Alexander) and certainly don’t work in soccer development seemed to enjoy the Tails of Great Soccer Players series.
I see your comment as actually encouraging my style: people who care about the advice will dig a bit to isolate the tips, people who don’t care about it will spend a fun 5 minutes and have a few chuckles. Do you think the writing would be better if it was more structured (i.e. adding an intro and conclusion with a clear list of tips)?
P.S. The day I start writing listicles, take me behind the shed a put a bullet in me.
I certainly don’t write well enough to be considered “porn” :)
It’s true that my blog doesn’t have a terminal value outside itself, although I will occasionally write about Effective Altruism topics.My goal is to have a popular blog with a lively discussion, my blog will be popular if people enjoy my writing. That’s the goal in itself, I am not planning to turn it into a source of income or anything like that.
Different people enjoy vastly different things: I am getting overwhelmingly positive response on LessWrong, and overwhelmingly negative response on Reddit. That’s a good thing: like a dating profile my goal is to find my specific audience and not write universal clickbait, and LW is definitely the audience I aspire to have.
To apply to a LW audience, I’m trying to:
Come up with genuine insights based on analysis rather than repeat common wisdom that’s based on sounding plausible.
Be always willing to learn and be corrected, including offering a reward for people finding major errors in my posts. One person has deserved it so far for pointing out a serious factual mistake that I fell for because of confirmation bias.
Show my math. If you don’t want to see me calculate the influence of outliers on a regression slope, the blog isn’t for you ;) If I can’t do the math myself, I won’t take someone else’s word for it.
Puns.
The above list is very different from what would apply to 90% of my Facebook friends, for example, and I’m OK with it. If I wanted 100,000 shares, I would write “27 ways how Bernie is actually a lot like Batman and Trump is like Lex Luthor”.
Not really, but I think I would have enjoyed more technical details. I understand that this would have made your writing less universally appealing, it’s just that the topic is quite dear to me and I can’t seem to read enough stuff on the subject.