It’s probably extremely hard to critique people who have spent 10 years steel-manning their assumptions[1] without being able to go back and forth to build up any butterfly ideas, even if there is a great critique out there.
(and I also am obviously not going to be nearly as good an intellectual sparring partner as the entire EA community collectively would be so it seems better to develop ideas in public than in private)
I’d be happy to see this kind of process, and don’t think it’s against the rules of the contest. You might not want to tag early versions with the contest tag if you don’t expect them to win and don’t think panelists should bother voting on them, but tagging the early versions wouldn’t count against you for the final version.
On a different note (taking off my contest-oragnizer hat, putting on my Forum hat): I think people should feel free to post butterfly ideas with the idea that they will develop them further. The Forum exists in part for this kind of communal idea development. (Of course, this isn’t the best approach for certain kinds of idea development. In particular, it might make sense to do some basic research on the Forum before posting certain questions or starting to write something long on a topic you’re very unsure about.
It’s probably extremely hard to critique people who have spent 10 years steel-manning their assumptions[1] without being able to go back and forth to build up any butterfly ideas, even if there is a great critique out there.
this feels related
(and I also am obviously not going to be nearly as good an intellectual sparring partner as the entire EA community collectively would be so it seems better to develop ideas in public than in private)
I’d be happy to see this kind of process, and don’t think it’s against the rules of the contest. You might not want to tag early versions with the contest tag if you don’t expect them to win and don’t think panelists should bother voting on them, but tagging the early versions wouldn’t count against you for the final version.
On a different note (taking off my contest-oragnizer hat, putting on my Forum hat): I think people should feel free to post butterfly ideas with the idea that they will develop them further. The Forum exists in part for this kind of communal idea development. (Of course, this isn’t the best approach for certain kinds of idea development. In particular, it might make sense to do some basic research on the Forum before posting certain questions or starting to write something long on a topic you’re very unsure about.