To push back on this a bit, I genuinely dislike much of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s and Scott Aexander’s blogging for not being serious enough or intellectually rigorous enough. I would avoid sharing many non-serious articles with people, for example, Wait But Why’s “The Artificial Revolution” or Scott Alexander’s “Superintelligence FAQ” or Scott Alexander’s “Beware Systemic Change” (especially the dialogue) because the posts’ non-serious tone make it hard to take the content of the post seriously, and I wouldn’t include them in a fellowship syllabus, for example. At the same time, I recognize that many more people have read Wait But Why’s “The Artificial Revolution” or Eliezer Yudkowsky’s posts because they are written in an interesting way, compared to if they were more serious.
In contrast, I’m a fan of other kinds of “engaging” writing such as Nate Soares’ “On caring” and Joe Carlsmith’s “Against neutrality about creating happy lives” or “Small animals have enormous brains for their size”. There are different ways of being engaging, and some of them have a higher risk of sacrificing respectability.
(Writing in easy-to-read and brief sentences is a good recommendation, but I haven’t done that here because I don’t feel like taking the time to revise my comment.)
I think there is a place for dry writing on the EA Forum. (And by dry, I mean something like what Rethink Priorities currently writes.) I think “more engaging writing → more views” is a valuable reason to have more interesting writing, but I think we should still be mindful of whether trying to make your writing more interesting leads to poorer argumentation or respectability.
I also find a lot of the content in the LW/rationality space (especially Eliezer’s and Scott’s) long-winded for what it has to say, and frustrating that it lacks summaries (although this would be an easy fix). I find it doesn’t respect my time, and it shouldn’t take so long to be able to decide whether something is worth reading or not. I understand some people like that style, but I don’t.
I don’t find “dry” stuff boring. If the topic itself is interesting (and I’m interested in a lot of things!), it gets to the point, and the explanations/arguments are thorough and concise, then reading it will likely be interesting to me.
Obviously everyone is free to have their own stylistic preferences, but I think it’s bad for Forum norms to put much weight on “respectability” or “seriousness” per se. Unlike some other factors some people here have listed as things to value above engagement, these factors actively and directly discourage engaging writing, while also encouraging credentialism & elitism – it takes significant training/practice to write in a respectable style.
Less confidently, I think trying to be respectable often pushes one against thinking certain kinds of thoughts or making certain kinds of arguments, even when they are true. And I’m much more confident that respectability prejudices debate towards certain groups of people, many of which have much worse epistemic norms than the less-respectable people you mention.
The best example of this at present is probably a lot of COVID debates (e.g. lab leak), where you have very respectable people making flagrantly bad arguments, that are getting taken very seriously because they come from respectable sources and are written in a respectable style.
I think there are quite a few topics where the relevant Alexander post, or some other non-respectable source, is the best available on the topic – partly because it is the most readable, but often also because it is better prioritised, thought-through and epistemically careful than most respectable reviews of the same topic.
If being more engaging requires you to make bad arguments, then I’m against being engaging, but if it merely leads to “poorer respectability”, then I’m against being against it. If someone discounts what someone says because it doesn’t come across as respectable/serious/academic, rather than because its arguments are bad, then I significantly lower my opinion of that person, and I think it’s rational for me to do so. I don’t think we should be deciding our community norms with those people in mind.
(P.S. It’s possible I’m misunderstanding your definition of “respectability” here, or over-reacting to your specific choice of words. If so, I’d be happy to dig into this further.)
To push back on this a bit, I genuinely dislike much of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s and Scott Aexander’s blogging for not being serious enough or intellectually rigorous enough. I would avoid sharing many non-serious articles with people, for example, Wait But Why’s “The Artificial Revolution” or Scott Alexander’s “Superintelligence FAQ” or Scott Alexander’s “Beware Systemic Change” (especially the dialogue) because the posts’ non-serious tone make it hard to take the content of the post seriously, and I wouldn’t include them in a fellowship syllabus, for example. At the same time, I recognize that many more people have read Wait But Why’s “The Artificial Revolution” or Eliezer Yudkowsky’s posts because they are written in an interesting way, compared to if they were more serious.
In contrast, I’m a fan of other kinds of “engaging” writing such as Nate Soares’ “On caring” and Joe Carlsmith’s “Against neutrality about creating happy lives” or “Small animals have enormous brains for their size”. There are different ways of being engaging, and some of them have a higher risk of sacrificing respectability.
(Writing in easy-to-read and brief sentences is a good recommendation, but I haven’t done that here because I don’t feel like taking the time to revise my comment.)
I think there is a place for dry writing on the EA Forum. (And by dry, I mean something like what Rethink Priorities currently writes.) I think “more engaging writing → more views” is a valuable reason to have more interesting writing, but I think we should still be mindful of whether trying to make your writing more interesting leads to poorer argumentation or respectability.
I also find a lot of the content in the LW/rationality space (especially Eliezer’s and Scott’s) long-winded for what it has to say, and frustrating that it lacks summaries (although this would be an easy fix). I find it doesn’t respect my time, and it shouldn’t take so long to be able to decide whether something is worth reading or not. I understand some people like that style, but I don’t.
I don’t find “dry” stuff boring. If the topic itself is interesting (and I’m interested in a lot of things!), it gets to the point, and the explanations/arguments are thorough and concise, then reading it will likely be interesting to me.
Obviously everyone is free to have their own stylistic preferences, but I think it’s bad for Forum norms to put much weight on “respectability” or “seriousness” per se. Unlike some other factors some people here have listed as things to value above engagement, these factors actively and directly discourage engaging writing, while also encouraging credentialism & elitism – it takes significant training/practice to write in a respectable style.
Less confidently, I think trying to be respectable often pushes one against thinking certain kinds of thoughts or making certain kinds of arguments, even when they are true. And I’m much more confident that respectability prejudices debate towards certain groups of people, many of which have much worse epistemic norms than the less-respectable people you mention.
The best example of this at present is probably a lot of COVID debates (e.g. lab leak), where you have very respectable people making flagrantly bad arguments, that are getting taken very seriously because they come from respectable sources and are written in a respectable style.
I think there are quite a few topics where the relevant Alexander post, or some other non-respectable source, is the best available on the topic – partly because it is the most readable, but often also because it is better prioritised, thought-through and epistemically careful than most respectable reviews of the same topic.
If being more engaging requires you to make bad arguments, then I’m against being engaging, but if it merely leads to “poorer respectability”, then I’m against being against it. If someone discounts what someone says because it doesn’t come across as respectable/serious/academic, rather than because its arguments are bad, then I significantly lower my opinion of that person, and I think it’s rational for me to do so. I don’t think we should be deciding our community norms with those people in mind.
(P.S. It’s possible I’m misunderstanding your definition of “respectability” here, or over-reacting to your specific choice of words. If so, I’d be happy to dig into this further.)