Step 1: Write a concise summary of the points you want to get across
EA forum posts are needlessly long and otherwise painful to read because they include:
- Too many caveats
- Overuse of passive voice and abstraction
- Spatterings of Latin
- Pussy-footing
- Obscure references
- Bet hedging
The reader's time is precious. Write concisely.
Step 2: Edit to conceptualise everything that could possibly be conceptualised. Explain each concept when introduced.
"EA forum posts have a low level of reader appeal because, by excessive use of overcaveating, and other lexical blunders, the value density of the forum posts, that is the amount of value divided by the number of words, is very low. Accordingly, reader malaise is increased and this leads to a loss of reader retention. Even in the retained group, those who read the whole post despite the low-value density, there is a loss of value due to opportunity cost; that is to say, that time spent reading the post could otherwise have been spent doing something of moral value.
Additionally, writers seem to suffer from the curse of knowledge. That is to say that they forget what it was like not to know something, and therefore include produce exclusionary writing - people ignorant of the relevant components of the writer's knowledge are excluded from understanding the writing.
Sometimes the writer has the opposite problem; they are too emphetic towards the reader. They incorporate a defensive writing style. That is to say that they write prophylactically to prevent the reader from being upset by their writing at the expense of value-density. Overall, this is usually net-negative due to the aforementioned opportunity costs.
Step 3: Sprinkle in allusions that you are part of the in-group. DO NOT ELABORATE ON OBSCURE REFERENCES.
Epistemic status: I have thought about this at length, and believe that the core statements are true. I've employed caveat-omission and taken a style on the concise end of the conciseness - politeness spectrum.
There is an aphorism in machine learning (Yudkowsky, 2015): "junk in, junk out". That is to say that poor inputs lead to poor outputs. This holds true of this forum too; low post quality adversely affects the net effect the reader ascertains by parsing the post.
EA forum posts have a low level of reader appeal because, by excessive use of overcaveating, which is as the name implies, and other poor writing techniques, the value density of the forum posts, that is the amount of value divided by the number of words, is very low. Accordingly, reader malaise is increased and this leads to a loss of reader retention. Even in the retained group, those who read the whole post despite the low-value density, there is a loss of value due to opportunity cost; that is to say, that time spent reading the post could otherwise have been spent doing something of moral value (and this holds true regardless of your ethical framework of choice, be it deontological or utilitarian). The opportunity cost of your verbosity could manifest itself in the form of reduced AI safety research.
Additionally, writers seem to suffer from the curse of knowledge. That is to say that they forget what it was like not to know something, and therefore include produce exclusionary writing - people ignorant of the relevant components of the writer's knowledge schema are excluded from understanding parsing the writing.
Sometimes writers have the opposite problem; they are too emphatic to the reader. They incorporate a defensive writing style. That is to say that they write prophylactically to prevent the reader from being upset by their writing at the expense of value-density. Overall, this is usually net-negative in expectation due to the aforementioned opportunity costs.
Step 4: Read it through for anything which could possibly be construed as wrong, morally or factually. Caveat/flatter/self-deprecate it away. Hedge every claim.
Epistemic status: I have thought about this at length, and believe that the core statements are true (85%) but I've been wrong before and am very open to have my mind changed on them and any other points contained or implied therein. I've employed caveat-omission and taken a style on the concise end of the conciseness - politeness spectrum.
If I recall correctly, there is an aphorism in machine learning: "junk in, junk out". That is to say that poor inputs lead to poor outputs. This could perhaps hold true of this forum too; low post quality could maybe adversely affect the net effect the reader ascertains by parsing the post.
I sometimes come away with the impression that EA forum posts have a low level of reader appeal because, by arguably excessive use of overcaveating, which is as the name implies, and other poor writing techniques, the value density of the forum posts, that is the amount of value divided by the number of words, is very low. Accordingly, reader malaise is maybe increased and this perhaps leads to a loss of reader retention. Even in the retained group, those who read the whole post despite the low-value density, there is perhaps a loss of value due to opportunity cost; that is to say, that time spent reading the post could otherwise have been spent doing something of moral value (I'd argue that this holds true regardless of your ethical framework of choice, be it deontological or utilitarian). The opportunity cost of your verbosity could manifest itself in the form of reduced AI safety research on key problems like solving inner alignment.
Additionally, some writers seem (at least to me) to suffer from the curse of knowledge. That is to say that they forget what it was like not to know something, and therefore include produce what could be described as exclusionary writing - people ignorant of the relevant components of the writer's schema are excluded from parsing the writing. That isn't to say the readers are ignorant, I personally think that every EA I've met has been very knowledgable about most matters.
It could perhaps be argued that sometimes writers have the opposite problem; they are too emphatic to the reader. They seem incorporate a defensive writing style (Joey, 2020). That is to say that they write prophylactically to prevent the reader from being upset by their writing at the expense of value-density. Overall, this is, I believe, usually net-negative in expectation due to the aforementioned opportunity costs.
Step 5: Italicise, in more ways than one...
Epistemic status: I believe that the core statements are true (99.9%, De omnibus dubitandum est) but I've been wrong before and am very open to having my mind changed on them and any other points contained or implied therein.
Pecunia non olet, sed tuus scriptura agit?
If I recall correctly, there is an aphorism in machine learning: "junk in, junk out". That is to say that poor inputs, per se, lead to poor outputs. This could perhaps hold true of this forum too; low post quality could maybe adversely affect the net effect the reader ascertains by parsing the post.
I sometimes come away with the impression that EA forum posts have a low level of reader appeal because, by arguably excessive use of overcaveating, which is as the name implies, and other poor writing techniques, the value density of the forum posts, that is the amount of value divided by the number of words, is very low (of course, Ceterus Paribus). Accordingly Ipso Facto, reader malaise is maybe increased and this perhaps leads to a loss of reader retention. Even in the retained group, those who read the whole post despite the low-value density, there is perhaps a loss of value due to opportunity cost; that is to say, that time spent reading the post could otherwise have been spent doing something of moral value (I'd argue that this holds true regardless of your ethical framework of choice, be it deontological or utilitarian Ex ante prioritarianism). The opportunity cost of your verbosity could manifest itself in the form of reduced AI safety research on key problems like solving inner alignment.
Additionally, some writers seem (at least to me) to suffer from the curse of knowledge. That is to say that they forget what it was like not to know something, and therefore include produce what could be described as exclusionary writing - people ignorant of the relevant components of the writer's schema are excluded from parsing the writing. That isn't to say the readers are ignorant, I personally think that every EA I've met has been very knowledgable about most matters.
It could perhaps be argued that sometimes writers have the opposite problem; they are too emphatic to the reader. They seem to incorporate a defensive writing style, pro forma. That is to say that they write prophylactically to prevent the reader from being upset by their writing at the expense of decreased value-density. Overall, this is, I believe, usually net-negative in expectation ex-ante due to the aforementioned opportunity costs.
I believe this forum could, Mutatis mutandis, do even more good.
Step 6: Reap in the sweet sweet karma
- It makes you look educated and highly EA
- You must have read a lot of philosophy papers or attended a really expensive private school to have picked up so much Latin
- You're clearly part of the in-group. Nobody can doubt it when you reference Less Wrong forum posts spanning a decade and reference AI in completely unrelated contexts
- The single best indicator of intellect is the number of google searches a normal person has to perform per sentence.
- As you hedged every single bet, you can't possibly be called out as being wrong
- Nobody is actually going to actually read the post, they'll just skim it and upvote if they agree with the gist.
- It looks like more work has gone into it despite making the exact same points; it's literally ten times longer without requiring you to make a single additional point!
I understand where you are coming from. But this post seems a bit mean towards writers. I feel that I am the kind of writer it is directed at so I want to defend myself.
Making something short and sweet takes a lot of work. My writing for myself includes references to obscure stuff I read, conceptualizing, etc. And sometimes my posts have a target audience of only a few people and I don’t care if anyone else reads it.[1] Hence, it doesn’t seem worth it to spend weeks or months converting my notes into something that would be optimal for the reader (yes, it can take months).
I caveat a lot for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I’m afraid that five minutes after posting, someone will point out a mistake that is obvious to most, and that comment will be upvoted more than my post, and then people won’t even read the post or my other posts because if I didn’t know X, then I must be stupid, and I will lose my job and respect of most of my friends. The alternatives are not posting anything, losing sleep, or doing even more research. A few extra words for you to read sometimes seems like a fair price to avoid any of these.
I write for the EA forum because I want to do good not to reap karma that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on anything. Also, writing posts of the kind you described is far from the easiest way to get karma if anyone wanted it.
For example, I spent months on trying to evaluate Reducing aquatic noise as a wild animal welfare intervention. I came away with no strong conclusions. I thought that converting my notes into something somewhat readable is better than nothing because:
Maybe I should’ve said the target audience in the beginning of the post. Although I’m not sure if anyone falls into any of these categories. And if anyone does, perhaps they wouldn’t mind that much the text not being optimal for reading as they might be very interested anyway.
The point I'm trying to make is that there's something insensitive about assuming that because you can do something in 40 minutes, other EAs must be able to do it in that time as well. I've repeatedly had people tell me that some task should be easy for me (in writing contexts, specifically), but I ended up taking >3x the amount of time they said it should take me.