I think we could use more intellectual productivity. I think we already have the capacity for a lot more. I think that would do a lot against any problems we might have, Obviously I am aware of the futility of the vague “we” in this paragraph, so I’ll talk about what I could do but don’t.
I have a lot of ideas to write up. I want to write something on “The improper use of empathy”, something about “leading and following”, something about social awkwardness from the inside. I wrote an article about fermi estimation that I’ve never posted. And some other ideas that I can’t remember right now. I’ll admit I have one meta-essay in here somewhere too. “Who’s in charge here?”
I don’t write as much for LW as I could, because I feel like a mere mortal among gods. I feel kindof inadequate, like I would be lowering the level of discussion around here. Ironically, the essays that I do post are all quite well upvoted, and not posting may be one source of the lowered quality of LW.
I may not be the only one.
EDIT: this is also why I post to discussion and not main.
I don’t feel inadequate but I do feel likely to get jumped all over for mistakes. I’ve realized that you really need to go over things with a fine-toothed comb, and that there are countless cultural peculiarities that are, for me, unexpected.
I’ve decided that the way I will feel comfortable posting here is to carefully word my point, make sure that point is obvious to the reader, identify and mentally outline any other claims in the piece, and make sure every part is supported and then (until I get to know the culture better) ask someone to check it out for spots that will be misunderstood.
That has resulted in me doing a lot of research. So now my main bottleneck is that I feel like posting something requires doing a lot of research. This is well and good IMO, but it means I won’t post anywhere near as much simply because it takes a lot of time.
I’ve wondered if it would do us good to form a writer’s group within LW where people can find out what topics everyone else is interested in writing about (which would allow them to co-author, cutting the work in half), see whether there are volunteers to do research for posts, and get a “second pair of eyes” to detect any karma-destroying mistakes in the writings before they’re posted.
A group like this would probably result in more writing.
(: I do not have time to organize this currently. I’m not even sure I will have time to post on LessWrong. I have a lot of irons on the fire. :/
I would sure love to run a LW writer’s group though, that would be awesome. Inevitably, it would be pointed out that I am not an expert on LW culture. If things slow down, and I do not see anyone else doing this, I may go for it anyway.
I can no longer hold my tongue. Your smileys are upside-down, and the tiny moments of empathetic sadness when my eyes haven’t sorted out which side of the parens the colon is on are really starting to add up. :)
What are your reasons for postponing? More interestingly, what would get you to post them? Would the writer’s group as described above do it, or this other suggestion here?
Being absolutely, utterly terrible at writing. Being utterly incapable of clear communication. Being a sloppy thinker incapable of formalizing and testing all the awesome theories I come up with.
Being rather shy and caring very very much about the opinions of this community, and very insecure in my own abilities, fearing ridicule and downvotes.
Other than that I am extremely motivated to share all these insights I think might be extremely valuable to the world, somehow.
The suggestion mentioned wouldn’t help at all. Really, anything radial enough will look less like fixing something I’ve written, and more like me explaining the idea and someone else writing an article about it with me pointing out miscommunications.
Yep, that’s my experience as well. Recently, I decided “screw what LW thinks” and started posting more thoughts of mine, and they’re all getting upvoted. My vague intuitions about how many upvotes my posts will get doesn’t seem to correlate very well with how many upvotes they actually get either. This is probably true for other people as well.
The only potential problem with this, IMO, is if people think I’m more of an authoritative source than I actually am. I’m just sharing random thoughts I have; I don’t do scholarly work like gwern.
It seems to me that there are lots and lots of people who want to write posts but they’re concerned about whether those posts will be received well. I’ve read, also, that more people put “public speaking” as their worst fear than “death” when surveyed. If we made a karma prediction tool, maybe that would help get people posting here. Here’s what I’m thinking:
First, we could create a checklist of the traits that we think will get a LessWrong post upvoted. For instance:
Is there an obvious main point or constructive goal?
Is the main point supported / is there a reasonable plan for the constructive goal? (Or are they otherwise framed in the correct context “This is hypothetical” or whatever.)
What type of support is included (math, citations, graphics, etc).
Was the topic already covered?
Is it a topic of interest to LessWrong?
Is it uplifting or unhappy?
(Or do a separate survey that asks people’s reasons for upvoting / downvoting and populate the checklist with those.)
Then we could post the checklist as a poll in each new post and article for a while.
Then we could correlate the karma data with the checklist poll data and test it to see how accurately it predicts a post’s karma.
If you had a karma prediction tool, would it help you post more?
[pollid:413]
Posting that checklist as a poll in each new post would likely end up irritating people.
A simpler approach, with the twin advantages of being simpler and being something one can do unilaterally, would be to just count the proportion of recent, non-meetup-related Discussion posts with positive karma. Then you could give potential post authors an encouraging reference class forecast like “85% of non-meetup Discussion posts get positive karma”.
You know what? That is simple and elegant. I like that about it… but in the worst case scenario, that will encourage people to post stuff without thinking about it because they’ll make the hasty generalization that “All non-meetup posts have an 85% chance of getting some karma” and even in the best case scenario, a lot of people will probably be thinking something along the lines of “Just because Yvain and Gwern and people who are really good at this get positive karma doesn’t mean that I will.”
I think we could use more intellectual productivity. I think we already have the capacity for a lot more. I think that would do a lot against any problems we might have, Obviously I am aware of the futility of the vague “we” in this paragraph, so I’ll talk about what I could do but don’t.
I have a lot of ideas to write up. I want to write something on “The improper use of empathy”, something about “leading and following”, something about social awkwardness from the inside. I wrote an article about fermi estimation that I’ve never posted. And some other ideas that I can’t remember right now. I’ll admit I have one meta-essay in here somewhere too. “Who’s in charge here?”
I don’t write as much for LW as I could, because I feel like a mere mortal among gods. I feel kindof inadequate, like I would be lowering the level of discussion around here. Ironically, the essays that I do post are all quite well upvoted, and not posting may be one source of the lowered quality of LW.
I may not be the only one.
EDIT: this is also why I post to discussion and not main.
I don’t feel inadequate but I do feel likely to get jumped all over for mistakes. I’ve realized that you really need to go over things with a fine-toothed comb, and that there are countless cultural peculiarities that are, for me, unexpected.
I’ve decided that the way I will feel comfortable posting here is to carefully word my point, make sure that point is obvious to the reader, identify and mentally outline any other claims in the piece, and make sure every part is supported and then (until I get to know the culture better) ask someone to check it out for spots that will be misunderstood.
That has resulted in me doing a lot of research. So now my main bottleneck is that I feel like posting something requires doing a lot of research. This is well and good IMO, but it means I won’t post anywhere near as much simply because it takes a lot of time.
I’ve wondered if it would do us good to form a writer’s group within LW where people can find out what topics everyone else is interested in writing about (which would allow them to co-author, cutting the work in half), see whether there are volunteers to do research for posts, and get a “second pair of eyes” to detect any karma-destroying mistakes in the writings before they’re posted.
A group like this would probably result in more writing.
That’s a really good idea.
Let me know when you’ve organized something.
(: I do not have time to organize this currently. I’m not even sure I will have time to post on LessWrong. I have a lot of irons on the fire. :/
I would sure love to run a LW writer’s group though, that would be awesome. Inevitably, it would be pointed out that I am not an expert on LW culture. If things slow down, and I do not see anyone else doing this, I may go for it anyway.
I can no longer hold my tongue. Your smileys are upside-down, and the tiny moments of empathetic sadness when my eyes haven’t sorted out which side of the parens the colon is on are really starting to add up. :)
Rofl. I am not sure if this is supposed to get me to stop, or get me to laugh.
Even in the same comment, you don’t orient your smileys the same way. Just saying...
I have like 10 different articles I’d like to submit to this, many of which have been on ice for literally years!
What are your reasons for postponing? More interestingly, what would get you to post them? Would the writer’s group as described above do it, or this other suggestion here?
Would something else help?
Being absolutely, utterly terrible at writing. Being utterly incapable of clear communication. Being a sloppy thinker incapable of formalizing and testing all the awesome theories I come up with.
Being rather shy and caring very very much about the opinions of this community, and very insecure in my own abilities, fearing ridicule and downvotes.
Other than that I am extremely motivated to share all these insights I think might be extremely valuable to the world, somehow.
The suggestion mentioned wouldn’t help at all. Really, anything radial enough will look less like fixing something I’ve written, and more like me explaining the idea and someone else writing an article about it with me pointing out miscommunications.
Yep, that’s my experience as well. Recently, I decided “screw what LW thinks” and started posting more thoughts of mine, and they’re all getting upvoted. My vague intuitions about how many upvotes my posts will get doesn’t seem to correlate very well with how many upvotes they actually get either. This is probably true for other people as well.
The only potential problem with this, IMO, is if people think I’m more of an authoritative source than I actually am. I’m just sharing random thoughts I have; I don’t do scholarly work like gwern.
It seems to me that there are lots and lots of people who want to write posts but they’re concerned about whether those posts will be received well. I’ve read, also, that more people put “public speaking” as their worst fear than “death” when surveyed. If we made a karma prediction tool, maybe that would help get people posting here. Here’s what I’m thinking:
First, we could create a checklist of the traits that we think will get a LessWrong post upvoted. For instance:
Is there an obvious main point or constructive goal?
Is the main point supported / is there a reasonable plan for the constructive goal? (Or are they otherwise framed in the correct context “This is hypothetical” or whatever.)
What type of support is included (math, citations, graphics, etc).
Was the topic already covered?
Is it a topic of interest to LessWrong?
Is it uplifting or unhappy?
(Or do a separate survey that asks people’s reasons for upvoting / downvoting and populate the checklist with those.)
Then we could post the checklist as a poll in each new post and article for a while.
Then we could correlate the karma data with the checklist poll data and test it to see how accurately it predicts a post’s karma.
If you had a karma prediction tool, would it help you post more? [pollid:413]
Posting that checklist as a poll in each new post would likely end up irritating people.
A simpler approach, with the twin advantages of being simpler and being something one can do unilaterally, would be to just count the proportion of recent, non-meetup-related Discussion posts with positive karma. Then you could give potential post authors an encouraging reference class forecast like “85% of non-meetup Discussion posts get positive karma”.
You know what? That is simple and elegant. I like that about it… but in the worst case scenario, that will encourage people to post stuff without thinking about it because they’ll make the hasty generalization that “All non-meetup posts have an 85% chance of getting some karma” and even in the best case scenario, a lot of people will probably be thinking something along the lines of “Just because Yvain and Gwern and people who are really good at this get positive karma doesn’t mean that I will.”
Unfortunately, I think it would be ineffective.
Fair points.