Many of the best LessWrong posts give a word and a clear mental handle for something I kinda sorta knew loosely in my head. With the concept firmly in mind, I can use it and build on it deliberately. Sazen is an excellent example of the form.
Sazens are common in many fields I have some expertise in. “Control the centre of the board” in chess. “Footwork is foundational” in martial arts. “Shots on goal” in sports. “Conservation of expected evidence” in rationality. “Premature optimization is the root of all evil” in programming. These sentences a useful reminders, and while they aren’t misleading traps the way “Duncan Sabien is a teacher and a writer” they take some practice and experience or at least more detailed teaching to actually turn into something useful.
Having the word “Sazen” with this meaning in my head has changed how I write. It shifted my thesis statement from simply being a compressed version of my argument towards being an easy handle to repeat to oneself at need, the same way I might mutter “shots on goal shots on goal” to myself during a hockey game. Sazen is a bit meta, it’s not a technique for the object level accomplishments but a technique for how to teach or explain object level things, but anything that immediately upgrades my own writing is worth a solid upvote.
This post also gestures at the important problem of transmitting knowledge. It ultimately doesn’t know how to do this, but I especially appreciated the paragraph starting “much of what aggregated wisdom like that seems to do...” for pointing out that this can speed things up even if it can’t prevent the first mistake or two.
I think this is worth being included in the best of LW collection.
Many of the best LessWrong posts give a word and a clear mental handle for something I kinda sorta knew loosely in my head. With the concept firmly in mind, I can use it and build on it deliberately. Sazen is an excellent example of the form.
Sazens are common in many fields I have some expertise in. “Control the centre of the board” in chess. “Footwork is foundational” in martial arts. “Shots on goal” in sports. “Conservation of expected evidence” in rationality. “Premature optimization is the root of all evil” in programming. These sentences a useful reminders, and while they aren’t misleading traps the way “Duncan Sabien is a teacher and a writer” they take some practice and experience or at least more detailed teaching to actually turn into something useful.
Having the word “Sazen” with this meaning in my head has changed how I write. It shifted my thesis statement from simply being a compressed version of my argument towards being an easy handle to repeat to oneself at need, the same way I might mutter “shots on goal shots on goal” to myself during a hockey game. Sazen is a bit meta, it’s not a technique for the object level accomplishments but a technique for how to teach or explain object level things, but anything that immediately upgrades my own writing is worth a solid upvote.
This post also gestures at the important problem of transmitting knowledge. It ultimately doesn’t know how to do this, but I especially appreciated the paragraph starting “much of what aggregated wisdom like that seems to do...” for pointing out that this can speed things up even if it can’t prevent the first mistake or two.
I think this is worth being included in the best of LW collection.