For the most part, an initial reading of this post and the linked documents did have the intended effect on me of making me view many of the original claims as likely false or significantly exaggerated. With that said, my suggestion would have been to remove some sorts of stuff from the post and keep it only in the linked documents or follow-up posts. In particular, I’d say:
The photos provide a bit of information, but can be viewed as distracting and misleading. I think the value of information they provide is probably sufficient for their inclusion in a linked Google Doc, but including them twice in the post (and once near the top) gives them a lot of salience, and as some of the comments here show, this can cause some readers to switch off or view your post with hostility.
Some of the alternative hypothesis stuff, and the stuff related to claims about Ben Pace, may also have been better suited to a linked Google Doc—something that curious readers could dig into, but that was not given a lot of salience for somebody who was just interested in the core claims. I think there’s some value to these exercises, but it would muddy the waters less if this were less salient, so that readers could focus on the core claims.
Some of the editorialization e.g., around what we should be focusing on, or how much effort was wasted on this, would probably have been best left to a follow-up post, if and after the core claims of this post achieved more widespread acceptance. I do see some value in the editorialization, but it feels a bit premature as its validity is contingent on the core claims in the post being accepted. (I do understand thinking about this and feeling strongly about this; I just think this post isn’t the optimal point for expressing these thoughts).
Now that the post is written and published, I don’t know if it makes sense to make these changes. But my own take is that the post would have been stronger had these changes been made prior to publishing. Curious to hear if others agree or disagree.
Also, I think that not linking to Ben’s post near the top can come across as bad form. I fully understand the desire to not link to a post you consider to be making false and misleading claims, and I also expect readers to have no problem locating the original post, so I expect the lack of a link to not matter materially. But it does come across as bad form (Ben’s post has been updating to link to yours, so there is now a clear asymmetry).
Thanks! I’m glad you’ve updated based on the evidence.
Regarding the other points, we debated internally a lot about all of those, and I agree that it’s not clear whether we should have done them or not. It was quite a difficult judgment call and I’m not sure if we made the right decision. But now that we have, I guess we’ll have to see what happens.
For the most part, an initial reading of this post and the linked documents did have the intended effect on me of making me view many of the original claims as likely false or significantly exaggerated. With that said, my suggestion would have been to remove some sorts of stuff from the post and keep it only in the linked documents or follow-up posts. In particular, I’d say:
The photos provide a bit of information, but can be viewed as distracting and misleading. I think the value of information they provide is probably sufficient for their inclusion in a linked Google Doc, but including them twice in the post (and once near the top) gives them a lot of salience, and as some of the comments here show, this can cause some readers to switch off or view your post with hostility.
Some of the alternative hypothesis stuff, and the stuff related to claims about Ben Pace, may also have been better suited to a linked Google Doc—something that curious readers could dig into, but that was not given a lot of salience for somebody who was just interested in the core claims. I think there’s some value to these exercises, but it would muddy the waters less if this were less salient, so that readers could focus on the core claims.
Some of the editorialization e.g., around what we should be focusing on, or how much effort was wasted on this, would probably have been best left to a follow-up post, if and after the core claims of this post achieved more widespread acceptance. I do see some value in the editorialization, but it feels a bit premature as its validity is contingent on the core claims in the post being accepted. (I do understand thinking about this and feeling strongly about this; I just think this post isn’t the optimal point for expressing these thoughts).
Now that the post is written and published, I don’t know if it makes sense to make these changes. But my own take is that the post would have been stronger had these changes been made prior to publishing. Curious to hear if others agree or disagree.
Also, I think that not linking to Ben’s post near the top can come across as bad form. I fully understand the desire to not link to a post you consider to be making false and misleading claims, and I also expect readers to have no problem locating the original post, so I expect the lack of a link to not matter materially. But it does come across as bad form (Ben’s post has been updating to link to yours, so there is now a clear asymmetry).
Updated! Just didn’t occur to us. We linked it elsewhere, but it is indeed better to have it near the top. Thanks for pointing it out!
Thanks! I’m guessing many people would have incorrectly guessed it was intentional (as I did) so I’m happy you fixed this.
Thanks! I’m glad you’ve updated based on the evidence.
Regarding the other points, we debated internally a lot about all of those, and I agree that it’s not clear whether we should have done them or not. It was quite a difficult judgment call and I’m not sure if we made the right decision. But now that we have, I guess we’ll have to see what happens.