Yeah, it sucks! My strategy has basically just been to … unilaterally cover the asymmetric effort myself, on the theory that, well, the world doesn’t owe me anything; if I want people to understand things that they’re not interested in understanding, the only way to get my wish is to write so well and cover all the angles so thoroughly that it becomes more embarrassing for them to pretend not to understand. It’s not entirely ineffective, but comes at the cost of the prime years of my life. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good use of my life, but it seems like an underprovided public good that I have a comparative advantage in. (Lots of people will write commercial software for money; not many people will do what I do out of religious fanaticism for the lost dream of rationality.)
The world does not owe me anything. Still, in this case, there is an ideological clash at play too:
thus, I am happy to write the main posts; happy to be charitable when replying to those who have read it; not willing to engage with criticism from those who clearly have not. also, research and engineering is my main activity, which means I should choose my battles carefully outside that
Yeah, it sucks! My strategy has basically just been to … unilaterally cover the asymmetric effort myself, on the theory that, well, the world doesn’t owe me anything; if I want people to understand things that they’re not interested in understanding, the only way to get my wish is to write so well and cover all the angles so thoroughly that it becomes more embarrassing for them to pretend not to understand. It’s not entirely ineffective, but comes at the cost of the prime years of my life. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good use of my life, but it seems like an underprovided public good that I have a comparative advantage in. (Lots of people will write commercial software for money; not many people will do what I do out of religious fanaticism for the lost dream of rationality.)
The world does not owe me anything. Still, in this case, there is an ideological clash at play too:
thus, I am happy to write the main posts; happy to be charitable when replying to those who have read it; not willing to engage with criticism from those who clearly have not. also, research and engineering is my main activity, which means I should choose my battles carefully outside that