To be clear, I didn’t mean that all LW posts and comments should be maximally short, merely that it would be better if brevity or a related virtue (like “ease of being read”) were considered as part of an equation to balance. Because I currently feel like we’re erring towards writing stuff that’s far longer than would be warranted if there was some virtue which could counterbalance spending extra paragraphs on buying diminishing returns in virtues like legibility (where e.g. the first footnote is often very valuable, but the fifth is less so).
If I think about a hypothetical new poster who wants to embody the ideals and virtues of rationalist discourse, asking them to have their writing use as small a number of words as possible feels like a relatively intimidating request when compared to asking that they consider the purpose and context of their writing and try to find an appropriate length with that in mind. The latter framing also feels much more conducive to experimenting, failing, and learning to do better.
I actually think that, if the community considered and practiced brevity as one of our virtues, the site would be more welcoming to new posters, not less. The notion of writing my first comment on this site in 2023, rather than 2013, feels daunting to me. Right now I imagine it feels like you have to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s before you can get started, whereas I’m pretty sure the standards for new commenters were far lower in the beginning of the site.
And one thing I find particularly daunting, and would imo find even more daunting as a newcomer, is that it feels like the median post and comment are incredibly long. And that, in order to fit in, one also has to go to such great lengths in everything one writes.
To be clear, I didn’t mean that all LW posts and comments should be maximally short, merely that it would be better if brevity or a related virtue (like “ease of being read”) were considered as part of an equation to balance. Because I currently feel like we’re erring towards writing stuff that’s far longer than would be warranted if there was some virtue which could counterbalance spending extra paragraphs on buying diminishing returns in virtues like legibility (where e.g. the first footnote is often very valuable, but the fifth is less so).
I actually think that, if the community considered and practiced brevity as one of our virtues, the site would be more welcoming to new posters, not less. The notion of writing my first comment on this site in 2023, rather than 2013, feels daunting to me. Right now I imagine it feels like you have to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s before you can get started, whereas I’m pretty sure the standards for new commenters were far lower in the beginning of the site.
And one thing I find particularly daunting, and would imo find even more daunting as a newcomer, is that it feels like the median post and comment are incredibly long. And that, in order to fit in, one also has to go to such great lengths in everything one writes.