I agree with all the points you make here, including on the suggested upvote/downvote distribution, and on the nature of DGB. FWIW, my (current, defeasible) plan for any future trade books I write is that they’d be more highbrow (and more caveated, and therefore drier) than DGB.
I think that’s the right approach for me, at the moment. But presumably at some point the best thing to do (for some people) will be wider advocacy (wider than DGB), which will inevitably involve simplification of ideas. So we’ll have to figure out what epistemic standards are appropriate in that context (given that GiveWell-level detail is off the table).
Some preliminary thoughts on heuristics for this (these are suggestions only):
Standards we’d want to keep as high as ever:
Is the broad brush strokes picture of what is being conveyed accurate? Is there any easy way the broad brush of what is conveyed could have been made more accurate?
Are the sentences being used to support this broad brush strokes picture warranted by the evidence?
Is this the way of communicating the core message about as caveated and detailed as one can reasonably manage?
Standards we’d need to relax:
Does this communicate as much detail as possible with respect to the relevant claims?
Does this communicate all the strongest possible counterarguments to the key claim?
Thanks. I think the criteria which standards to keep and which to relax you propose are reasonable.
It seems an important question. I would like someone trying it to study more formally, using for example “value of information” or “rational inattention” frameworks. I can imagine experiments like giving people a longer list of arguments and trying to gather feedback on what was the value for them and then making decisions based on that. (Now this seems to be done mainly based on author’s intuitions.)
I agree with all the points you make here, including on the suggested upvote/downvote distribution, and on the nature of DGB. FWIW, my (current, defeasible) plan for any future trade books I write is that they’d be more highbrow (and more caveated, and therefore drier) than DGB.
I think that’s the right approach for me, at the moment. But presumably at some point the best thing to do (for some people) will be wider advocacy (wider than DGB), which will inevitably involve simplification of ideas. So we’ll have to figure out what epistemic standards are appropriate in that context (given that GiveWell-level detail is off the table).
Some preliminary thoughts on heuristics for this (these are suggestions only):
Standards we’d want to keep as high as ever:
Is the broad brush strokes picture of what is being conveyed accurate? Is there any easy way the broad brush of what is conveyed could have been made more accurate?
Are the sentences being used to support this broad brush strokes picture warranted by the evidence?
Is this the way of communicating the core message about as caveated and detailed as one can reasonably manage?
Standards we’d need to relax:
Does this communicate as much detail as possible with respect to the relevant claims?
Does this communicate all the strongest possible counterarguments to the key claim?
Does this include every reasonable caveat?
I think that a blogpost that does very well with respect to the above, without compromising on the clarity of the core message, is Max Roser’s recent post: ‘The world is much better; The world is awful; The world can be much better’.
Thanks. I think the criteria which standards to keep and which to relax you propose are reasonable.
It seems an important question. I would like someone trying it to study more formally, using for example “value of information” or “rational inattention” frameworks. I can imagine experiments like giving people a longer list of arguments and trying to gather feedback on what was the value for them and then making decisions based on that. (Now this seems to be done mainly based on author’s intuitions.)
I agree Max’s post is doing a really good job!