This is an interesting critique! I think it misses a lot, though, so would like to push back on it. Full disclosure/conflict of interest – I’m one of Nick’s colleagues – we’re both editors at Works in Progress.
1) Blogs are short content. – I think a lot of your critiques here (that they become outdated quickly, don’t provide much long-term value, fall prey to replication crises) actually apply to all forms of published, static content – newspapers, tweet threads, newsletters, books, etc. We’ve all heard of books and news content that have aged badly – it’s unclear why you’ve listed this as a drawback of blogs. If anything, blogs are much easier to keep updated than the others (as you mention), especially compared to printed content – you can easily update an old blogpost and signpost when you’ve done that. You can’t edit a tweet thread, a printed book, or a news article easily.
I don’t think people need to read through entire archives of blogs for them to be useful. People often share links to particular old blogposts as references on a particular topic, and that’s fine. In the same way, we don’t say that newspapers are bad because people don’t read through newspaper archives.
2) Did anybody think about the incentives? – as you mention later on, the purpose of the prize is to incentivise new blogs to be created and maintained, so it wouldn’t make sense to reward ones that already exist. I don’t think it’s ironic because the topic is on longtermism – and it’s likely that at least some of these blogs will be maintained in the longterm, which may be another way to look at it. Many projects (and blogs) are likely to be unfinished, but that’s a feature of new projects in general. One way to improve the prize might be to reward blogs that stay maintained years from now, but I don’t think you make that point.
3) Examples – skipping over this as it looks like you liked many of them.
4) There’s not that many longtermist blogs around. To me, it seems like the EA and longtermist movements are growing rapidly in size and could be a lot bigger than they currently are, so what may seem like a sufficient number of blogs now wouldn’t be later. If you recognise all the blogs on that list, that seems like an indication that there aren’t very many of them. Ambitiously, people might want to reach a level where there were so many EA blogs that they weren’t able to keep track of all of them. EA Forum is great, but if EA was huge, people might not use this as the central forum to cross-post all their blogposts. This seems more like a central node or bridge to other content than The place to put everything EA related.
5) Blogs are for discourse. I think you may not be aware that Nick’s already an editor at Works in Progress (the long form magazine you mentioned). Blogs and longer form discourse magazines don’t seem like an either/or to me, and not to Nick who’s involved in both. I think they actually feed into each other: We sometimes recruit authors because we’ve read their blogs and want to develop their content further. And we’d be very happy if bloggers riffed off ideas that we’ve published on another platform like their own blog. In short, why not both?
I list this ageing as a drawback of blogs because it is in practice, if not in theory (and the structure of blogs encourages this). Safe some exceptions (SSC for minor stylistic edits, Nintil) blogs are usually not maintained in any way. I guess my complaint is that it would be entirely possible for this maintenance to occur (unlike with tweets/newspapers/books), but it usually doesn’t happen.
The structure of blogs doesn’t encourage this either: usually arranged chronologically, not by topic, with a focus on novelty.
As for reading archives, there is certainly a style of blog that is in practice not linked very often in the long term (I’m thinking of Overcoming Bias or Marginal Revolution or Econlog).
I don’t object to the posts being unfinished! That would be quite hypocritical of me :-) My argument is that here, the incentives are structured such that it’s much more likely that people will start a blog because of the prize, and once it’s over, they abandon it. I admit to the point that the prize will probably push marginal not-yet-bloggers over the edge.
One way to improve the prize might be to reward blogs that stay maintained years from now, but I don’t think you make that point.
Interesting! I thought I was absolutely making that point, especially in this section and especially especially in this section.
Maybe I wasn’t as clear here as I could have been, but I didn’t want to discourage the bloggers on your site. But to be absolutely clear:
You list 1 person who doesn’t have a public blog at all (!), 2 people whose blogs contain 0 content (!!), 2 more people who have written 3 blogposts each, and 3 more bloggers who actually have presentable blogs. That 3⁄8 blogs that could be in the category of “Flagship blog”. Not, I think, a good ratio.
Yeah, you’re probably right about this one.
Maybe it’s that I think that a prize is not the perfect way to approach this: Prizes seem to be useful for very discrete problems that have a very clear solution criterion, and less useful for very long-term, open-ended endeavours (where something like certificates of impact or retroactive funding are more suited).
I should have been clearer about this: I think blogs are in an odd position in the discourse—there is much more discourse going on on Twitter/YouTube/Discord (?) than on blogs, and I believe that this will not change much (newsletters notwithstanding). On the Pareto-frontier of “produces long-term value” and “encourages discourse” I think blogs are at best in an odd spot, and encouraging good YouTube videos about effective altruism would be a much better way to enter the discourse (admittedly, this may be already happening, with the OpenPhil grant to Kurzgesagt).
I think my phrasing might have been unclear earlier – I’m Nick’s colleague at Works in Progress, but not on the blog prize and don’t have any involvement there.
1. I think that blogs fill a different purpose to many other formats you mention, but are also more feasible than writing long-form: for people who have other commitments, for writing short commentaries, for responding to topical events or stories, for publishing independent parts of a series in a way that makes each part more shareable. I’m sure you can think of many examples of each of these. I think it’s not important for them to be searchable in the same way as it is for encyclopedia entries, although that’s a bonus. YouTube videos are an alternative but they also have a different demographic audience and people who prefer to consume information in a different format, so they’re not interchangeable in that way, in my opinion.
2. Those aren’t quite the same as I suggested, which would be more like a prize for new blogs that are maintained in the longterm, or an additional prize for longterm maintenance.
3. (I’m not involved in this so don’t have any comments)
4. I think those are a different sort of problem. Prizes for open ended endeavours – such as answering an unsolved problem – don’t have a certainty of being resolved. Prizes for meeting some criteria, which involve essentially improving on existing methods, are more effective than those, as Anton Howes has written about here. But neither are the same as having a prize with the certainty that someone will win the prize out of the candidates that apply. A closer analogue of this prize is probably a competition.
This is an interesting critique! I think it misses a lot, though, so would like to push back on it.
Full disclosure/conflict of interest – I’m one of Nick’s colleagues – we’re both editors at Works in Progress.
1) Blogs are short content. – I think a lot of your critiques here (that they become outdated quickly, don’t provide much long-term value, fall prey to replication crises) actually apply to all forms of published, static content – newspapers, tweet threads, newsletters, books, etc. We’ve all heard of books and news content that have aged badly – it’s unclear why you’ve listed this as a drawback of blogs. If anything, blogs are much easier to keep updated than the others (as you mention), especially compared to printed content – you can easily update an old blogpost and signpost when you’ve done that. You can’t edit a tweet thread, a printed book, or a news article easily.
I don’t think people need to read through entire archives of blogs for them to be useful. People often share links to particular old blogposts as references on a particular topic, and that’s fine. In the same way, we don’t say that newspapers are bad because people don’t read through newspaper archives.
2) Did anybody think about the incentives? – as you mention later on, the purpose of the prize is to incentivise new blogs to be created and maintained, so it wouldn’t make sense to reward ones that already exist. I don’t think it’s ironic because the topic is on longtermism – and it’s likely that at least some of these blogs will be maintained in the longterm, which may be another way to look at it. Many projects (and blogs) are likely to be unfinished, but that’s a feature of new projects in general. One way to improve the prize might be to reward blogs that stay maintained years from now, but I don’t think you make that point.
3) Examples – skipping over this as it looks like you liked many of them.
4) There’s not that many longtermist blogs around. To me, it seems like the EA and longtermist movements are growing rapidly in size and could be a lot bigger than they currently are, so what may seem like a sufficient number of blogs now wouldn’t be later. If you recognise all the blogs on that list, that seems like an indication that there aren’t very many of them. Ambitiously, people might want to reach a level where there were so many EA blogs that they weren’t able to keep track of all of them. EA Forum is great, but if EA was huge, people might not use this as the central forum to cross-post all their blogposts. This seems more like a central node or bridge to other content than The place to put everything EA related.
5) Blogs are for discourse. I think you may not be aware that Nick’s already an editor at Works in Progress (the long form magazine you mentioned). Blogs and longer form discourse magazines don’t seem like an either/or to me, and not to Nick who’s involved in both. I think they actually feed into each other: We sometimes recruit authors because we’ve read their blogs and want to develop their content further. And we’d be very happy if bloggers riffed off ideas that we’ve published on another platform like their own blog. In short, why not both?
Thanks for the detailed answer :-)
I list this ageing as a drawback of blogs because it is in practice, if not in theory (and the structure of blogs encourages this). Safe some exceptions (SSC for minor stylistic edits, Nintil) blogs are usually not maintained in any way. I guess my complaint is that it would be entirely possible for this maintenance to occur (unlike with tweets/newspapers/books), but it usually doesn’t happen.
The structure of blogs doesn’t encourage this either: usually arranged chronologically, not by topic, with a focus on novelty.
As for reading archives, there is certainly a style of blog that is in practice not linked very often in the long term (I’m thinking of Overcoming Bias or Marginal Revolution or Econlog).
I don’t object to the posts being unfinished! That would be quite hypocritical of me :-) My argument is that here, the incentives are structured such that it’s much more likely that people will start a blog because of the prize, and once it’s over, they abandon it. I admit to the point that the prize will probably push marginal not-yet-bloggers over the edge.
Interesting! I thought I was absolutely making that point, especially in this section and especially especially in this section.
Maybe I wasn’t as clear here as I could have been, but I didn’t want to discourage the bloggers on your site. But to be absolutely clear:
You list 1 person who doesn’t have a public blog at all (!), 2 people whose blogs contain 0 content (!!), 2 more people who have written 3 blogposts each, and 3 more bloggers who actually have presentable blogs. That 3⁄8 blogs that could be in the category of “Flagship blog”. Not, I think, a good ratio.
Yeah, you’re probably right about this one.
Maybe it’s that I think that a prize is not the perfect way to approach this: Prizes seem to be useful for very discrete problems that have a very clear solution criterion, and less useful for very long-term, open-ended endeavours (where something like certificates of impact or retroactive funding are more suited).
I should have been clearer about this: I think blogs are in an odd position in the discourse—there is much more discourse going on on Twitter/YouTube/Discord (?) than on blogs, and I believe that this will not change much (newsletters notwithstanding). On the Pareto-frontier of “produces long-term value” and “encourages discourse” I think blogs are at best in an odd spot, and encouraging good YouTube videos about effective altruism would be a much better way to enter the discourse (admittedly, this may be already happening, with the OpenPhil grant to Kurzgesagt).
I think my phrasing might have been unclear earlier – I’m Nick’s colleague at Works in Progress, but not on the blog prize and don’t have any involvement there.
1. I think that blogs fill a different purpose to many other formats you mention, but are also more feasible than writing long-form: for people who have other commitments, for writing short commentaries, for responding to topical events or stories, for publishing independent parts of a series in a way that makes each part more shareable. I’m sure you can think of many examples of each of these. I think it’s not important for them to be searchable in the same way as it is for encyclopedia entries, although that’s a bonus. YouTube videos are an alternative but they also have a different demographic audience and people who prefer to consume information in a different format, so they’re not interchangeable in that way, in my opinion.
2. Those aren’t quite the same as I suggested, which would be more like a prize for new blogs that are maintained in the longterm, or an additional prize for longterm maintenance.
3. (I’m not involved in this so don’t have any comments)
4. I think those are a different sort of problem. Prizes for open ended endeavours – such as answering an unsolved problem – don’t have a certainty of being resolved. Prizes for meeting some criteria, which involve essentially improving on existing methods, are more effective than those, as Anton Howes has written about here. But neither are the same as having a prize with the certainty that someone will win the prize out of the candidates that apply. A closer analogue of this prize is probably a competition.