I didn’t downvote as that would have caused the comment to be invisible, but do want to note that:
I find having to read comments that are written in an unnecessarily fight-y or dismissive style to be quite a significant tax on publishing blogposts, increasing the cost of publishing a blog post by 20% or more.
There are almost always easy alternatives to that style of language. Like, I am (clearly!) pretty anal about grammar issues in a way that’s ripe for gentle ribbing—seems like an emoticon-laden joke would have conveyed the same sentiment in a nicer way. Or the direct approach could have been simply saying, “I think the paragraphs on hyphenation could have been relegated to a footnote or appendix” (which seems very reasonable).
I downvoted the above comment, because I think it is more critical than helpful in a way that mildly frustrates me (because I’m not sure quite what you meant, or how to update my views of the post in response to your critique) and seems likely to frustrate the author (for similar reasons).
What is your goal in trying to make points about whether this information is “important to stay up-to-date about” or worth being “six paragraphs” long?
Do you think this post shouldn’t have been published? That it should have been shorter? That it would have been good to include more justification of the content before getting into detail about these definitions?
Raemon thought that it seems good for leaders to keep people updated on how they are conceptualizing things.
I argued that this doesn’t seem true in all cases, pointing out that six paragraphs on whether to hyphenate “longetermism” isn’t important to stay updated on, even when it comes from a leader.
---
For stuff like this, my ideal goal is something like “converge on the truth.”
I usually settle for consolation prizes like “get more clarity about where & how I disagree with other folks in EA” and/or “note my disagreements as they arise.”
… or how to update my views of the post in response to your critique
For what it’s worth, I suspect there’s enough inferential distance between us on fundamental stuff such that I wouldn’t expect either of us to be able to easily update while discussing topics on this level of abstraction.
“Update my views of the post” probably wasn’t the right phrase to use—better would be “update my views of whether the post is a good thing to have on the Forum in something like its current form”.
In general, I have a strong inclination that people should post content on the Forum if it is related to effective altruism and might be valuable to read for even a small fraction of users. I’m not concerned about too many posts being made (at least at the current level of activity).
I might be concerned if people seem to be putting more time/effort into posts than is warranted by the expected impact of those posts, but I have a high bar to drawing that conclusion; generally, I’d trust the author’s judgment of how valuable a thing is for them to publish over my own, especially if they are an expert writing about something on which I am a non-expert.
Even if the information in this post wasn’t especially new (I’m not sure which bits have and haven’t been discussed elsewhere), I expect it to be helpful to EA-aligned people who find themselves trying to communicate about longtermism with people outside of EA, for some of the reasons Will outlined. I can imagine referring to it as I work on an edition of the EA Newsletter or prepare for an interview with a journalist.
--
Finally, on hyphenation:
a. There are at least two occasions in the last two months that I, personally, have had to decide how to spell “longtermism” in something written for a public audience. And while I am an unusual case...
b. …hyphenation matters! Movements look less professional when they can’t decide how to express terms they often use in writing (hyphenation, capitalization, etc.) Something like this makes me say “huh?” before I even start reading the article (written by a critic of a movement in that case, but the general point stands).
These are far from the most important paragraphs ever published on the Forum, but they do take a stand on a point with two reasonable sides and argue convincingly for one of them, in a way that could change how many readers refer to a common term.
I downvoted your comments as well, Milan, because I think this is exactly the kind of thing that should go on the EA Forum. The emergence of this term “longtermism” to describe a vaguer philosophy that was already there has been a huge, perhaps the main EA topic for like 2 years. I don’t even subscribe to longtermism (well, at least not to strong longtermism, which I considered to be the definition before reading this post) but the question of whether to hyphenate has come up many times for me. This was all useful information that I’m glad was put up for engagement within EA.
And the objection that words can never be precise is pretty silly. Splitting hairs can be annoying but this was an important consideration of meaningfully different definitions of longtermism. It’s very smart for EA to figure this out now to avoid all the problems that Will mentioned, like vagueness, when the term has become more widely known.
It sounded like your objection was that this post was about words and strategy instead of about the concepts. I for one am glad that EA is not just about thinking but about doing what needs to be done, including reaching agreement about how to talk about ideas and what kind of pitches we should be making.
Basically agree about the first claim, though the Forum isn’t really aimed at EA newcomers.
Eh, some conceptualizations are more valuable than others.
I don’t see how six paragraphs of Will’s latest thinking on whether to hyphenate “longtermism” could be important to stay up-to-date about.
I downvoted this comment because:
i) The hyphenation segment clearly isn’t the central argument of the post. This is a straw man.
ii) It’s generally a bit dismissive and unkind.
ii) If you don’t think something’s important to stay up-to-date on, you don’t have to read it or engage with it.
I didn’t downvote as that would have caused the comment to be invisible, but do want to note that:
I find having to read comments that are written in an unnecessarily fight-y or dismissive style to be quite a significant tax on publishing blogposts, increasing the cost of publishing a blog post by 20% or more.
There are almost always easy alternatives to that style of language. Like, I am (clearly!) pretty anal about grammar issues in a way that’s ripe for gentle ribbing—seems like an emoticon-laden joke would have conveyed the same sentiment in a nicer way. Or the direct approach could have been simply saying, “I think the paragraphs on hyphenation could have been relegated to a footnote or appendix” (which seems very reasonable).
I downvoted the above comment, because I think it is more critical than helpful in a way that mildly frustrates me (because I’m not sure quite what you meant, or how to update my views of the post in response to your critique) and seems likely to frustrate the author (for similar reasons).
What is your goal in trying to make points about whether this information is “important to stay up-to-date about” or worth being “six paragraphs” long?
Do you think this post shouldn’t have been published? That it should have been shorter? That it would have been good to include more justification of the content before getting into detail about these definitions?
Raemon thought that it seems good for leaders to keep people updated on how they are conceptualizing things.
I argued that this doesn’t seem true in all cases, pointing out that six paragraphs on whether to hyphenate “longetermism” isn’t important to stay updated on, even when it comes from a leader.
---
For stuff like this, my ideal goal is something like “converge on the truth.”
I usually settle for consolation prizes like “get more clarity about where & how I disagree with other folks in EA” and/or “note my disagreements as they arise.”
For what it’s worth, I suspect there’s enough inferential distance between us on fundamental stuff such that I wouldn’t expect either of us to be able to easily update while discussing topics on this level of abstraction.
“Update my views of the post” probably wasn’t the right phrase to use—better would be “update my views of whether the post is a good thing to have on the Forum in something like its current form”.
In general, I have a strong inclination that people should post content on the Forum if it is related to effective altruism and might be valuable to read for even a small fraction of users. I’m not concerned about too many posts being made (at least at the current level of activity).
I might be concerned if people seem to be putting more time/effort into posts than is warranted by the expected impact of those posts, but I have a high bar to drawing that conclusion; generally, I’d trust the author’s judgment of how valuable a thing is for them to publish over my own, especially if they are an expert writing about something on which I am a non-expert.
Even if the information in this post wasn’t especially new (I’m not sure which bits have and haven’t been discussed elsewhere), I expect it to be helpful to EA-aligned people who find themselves trying to communicate about longtermism with people outside of EA, for some of the reasons Will outlined. I can imagine referring to it as I work on an edition of the EA Newsletter or prepare for an interview with a journalist.
--
Finally, on hyphenation:
a. There are at least two occasions in the last two months that I, personally, have had to decide how to spell “longtermism” in something written for a public audience. And while I am an unusual case...
b. …hyphenation matters! Movements look less professional when they can’t decide how to express terms they often use in writing (hyphenation, capitalization, etc.) Something like this makes me say “huh?” before I even start reading the article (written by a critic of a movement in that case, but the general point stands).
These are far from the most important paragraphs ever published on the Forum, but they do take a stand on a point with two reasonable sides and argue convincingly for one of them, in a way that could change how many readers refer to a common term.
I downvoted your comments as well, Milan, because I think this is exactly the kind of thing that should go on the EA Forum. The emergence of this term “longtermism” to describe a vaguer philosophy that was already there has been a huge, perhaps the main EA topic for like 2 years. I don’t even subscribe to longtermism (well, at least not to strong longtermism, which I considered to be the definition before reading this post) but the question of whether to hyphenate has come up many times for me. This was all useful information that I’m glad was put up for engagement within EA.
And the objection that words can never be precise is pretty silly. Splitting hairs can be annoying but this was an important consideration of meaningfully different definitions of longtermism. It’s very smart for EA to figure this out now to avoid all the problems that Will mentioned, like vagueness, when the term has become more widely known.
It sounded like your objection was that this post was about words and strategy instead of about the concepts. I for one am glad that EA is not just about thinking but about doing what needs to be done, including reaching agreement about how to talk about ideas and what kind of pitches we should be making.