R

rogersbacon1

124 karmaJoined Dec 2021

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Very open to it - dual appointments (or whatever) are no problem. If you are doing some kind of work that falls outside the purview of traditional academia/journals and think you would benefit from being a SoS Research Fellow then we are happy to have you. 

re: PS - thanks! This is how we look at it - certainly could fail but worth a shot, let's see how it evolves

Glad you enjoyed it! 

great point re: friends and epistemics. Also makes me think of people who get rich and famous (cough cough SBF cough cough) and become surrounded by yes-men and yes-women instead of friends who can call them out on their bullshit. 

Thanks! 

"It's a bit harder to see how it's tractable. "

Yeah that's the hard one, did the best I could here but obviously most of my suggestions are not super practical/realistic.

what don't you understand, seems pretty clear to me 

This sounds great to me but I'm not the author, I just run the journal. We'd love to have you share your review of the article - "To register, please email info@theseedsofscience.org with your  name, title (can be anything/optional), institution (same as title), and link (personal website, twitter, or linkedin is fine) for your listing on the gardeners page. From there, it's pretty self-explanatory - I will add you to the mailing list and send you an email that includes the manuscript, our publication criteria, and a simple review form for recording votes/comments." 

"To register, please email info@theseedsofscience.org with your  name, title (can be anything/optional), institution (same as title), and link (personal website, twitter, or linkedin is fine) for your listing on the gardeners page. From there, it's pretty self-explanatory - I will add you to the mailing list and send you an email that includes the manuscript, our publication criteria, and a simple review form for recording votes/comments."


 

I would say that reading the whole piece would clear up these issues - the second half (III and IV) is very different than the first and it might be hard to understand the whole thrust the argument without getting to the end. 

I don't disagree with all of your points here regarding summaries and communicative efficiency. I think my argument is that other values necessarily get sacrificed in the name of efficiency and clarity - aesthetic value, persuasive efficacy, diversity of style/tone. Insisting that every article aims for clarity/efficiency is going to standardize articles in a way that affects the author's creativity and the mindset of the reader. There is nothing wrong with your preference for articles to conform to the "EA forum norms" - this is a style that is good for quick intake of information - but there are other goals that one can  have in writing and reading. I would say my goal in this article is persuasive and inspirational, and as such there is (I hope) an artistic quality that is probably not found in many articles on here. Adding a summary, in my opinion, would detract from these goals/qualities. For example, as I said the second half of the article is very different than the first - a reader who knows what is coming to some degree might not feel the same emotions (and might not be inspired/persuaded) as they would if going in cold. While summaries might convince some people to read on, they also might stop some people from reading who would just plunge in otherwise. I would argue  that the people who would be dissuaded from reading this article because of its summary are probably the people that need to read it the most, so in this sense of a summary is kind of self-defeating. 

A summary is also good if you want the largest number of people to read your article, but there is no reason why this must be your goal as an author and it is not mine here. I would rather fewer people read the essay and actually think about it then more people read it but just skim. 

Thanks for your comments! I never really had to make this argument before but I've had this feeling for some time. I can't say I'm super familiar with the EA forum and the typical writing styles/formats, curious what you or others think about it. 

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think I will add one - not because the article can't be summarized but because adding a summary is kind of antithetical to the whole thrust of the essay. In part, I am arguing  that excessive emphasis on legibility and efficiency in science is killing creativity.  If the lack of a summary means that less people will read it then so be it :) 

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