FWIW, I found this post hard to read, it took me a 5-10 minutes to understand the point you were making. I think this could be a result of the “walked into an argument half-way through” effect, but it could also be a result of your writing and tone being overly combative.
I have long suspected that those who make novel/controversial arguments, even if your only goal is truth-seeking, should burden a significant responsibility to communicate in a way which is calm, considerate and non-inflammatory.
FWIW, I also “walked into an argument half-way through”, and for me, the section “What do EA vegan advocates need to do?” was very useful to get a better sense of what exactly you were arguing for—you could consider putting a Tldr version of it at the beginning of the article.
those who make novel/controversial arguments, even if your only goal is truth-seeking, should burden a significant responsibility to communicate in a way which is calm, considerate and non-inflammatory
I agree with this principle. I also agree that this post is inflammatory. I worked really hard to make it the smallest amount of inflammation as possible, but it’s still pretty inflammatory. This felt necessary because my attempts to talk about object-level issues in nutrition in sensitive ways met with hostility and inflammation. This despite the fact that I made far more than “a small and marginal effort” to respect vegan ethical principles in my early posts. Not to mention the fact that my work made veganism more sustainable for perhaps dozens of people by motivating testing nutrition testing and treatment.
I view this post as analogous to removing a stuck splinter. It does raise your inflammation levels in the moment, but if you don’t do it the inflammation will never go away.
Of course that doesn’t mean I implemented splinter removal competently. I did my best, but the problem is in the pattern of behavior, not any one action, and that’s inherently high-context and hard to explain. I can see ways to make the post clearer, in the sense of a reader with no context immediately understanding it, but they would also have made it less accurate and more inflammatory. There are many times in writing this I explicitly had to choose between being overgenerous to people I quoted, uncharitable to them, or too long. I chose too long and I stand by that decision.
FWIW, I found this post hard to read, it took me a 5-10 minutes to understand the point you were making. I think this could be a result of the “walked into an argument half-way through” effect, but it could also be a result of your writing and tone being overly combative.
I have long suspected that those who make novel/controversial arguments, even if your only goal is truth-seeking, should burden a significant responsibility to communicate in a way which is calm, considerate and non-inflammatory.
An example of this done well: Freakonomics recent podcast on the deleterious effects of the rise in single parent households. This topic could have easily been inflammatory, however a small and marginal effort to be considerate nullified this effect in entirety.
FWIW, I also “walked into an argument half-way through”, and for me, the section “What do EA vegan advocates need to do?” was very useful to get a better sense of what exactly you were arguing for—you could consider putting a Tldr version of it at the beginning of the article.
I agree with this principle. I also agree that this post is inflammatory. I worked really hard to make it the smallest amount of inflammation as possible, but it’s still pretty inflammatory. This felt necessary because my attempts to talk about object-level issues in nutrition in sensitive ways met with hostility and inflammation. This despite the fact that I made far more than “a small and marginal effort” to respect vegan ethical principles in my early posts. Not to mention the fact that my work made veganism more sustainable for perhaps dozens of people by motivating testing nutrition testing and treatment.
I view this post as analogous to removing a stuck splinter. It does raise your inflammation levels in the moment, but if you don’t do it the inflammation will never go away.
Of course that doesn’t mean I implemented splinter removal competently. I did my best, but the problem is in the pattern of behavior, not any one action, and that’s inherently high-context and hard to explain. I can see ways to make the post clearer, in the sense of a reader with no context immediately understanding it, but they would also have made it less accurate and more inflammatory. There are many times in writing this I explicitly had to choose between being overgenerous to people I quoted, uncharitable to them, or too long. I chose too long and I stand by that decision.