To be fair mine regarding the link-to-articles tendency is not a well-formed opinion, just something I’ve felt during some online and offline conversations. Especially from other fellow rationalists, when they quote a Scott’s article or an obscure post on the sequences when not absolutely needed.
By the way, I think it’s also a bad idea to demand more work from people you are communicating with, like informally requesting them to read a full article instead of trying to explain your point in plain terms.
Let’s put it this way: we can have the privilege to link/refer to articles/concepts in our bubble because we kinda know what we’re talking about and we are people who like to spend time reading, but what if we have to communicate with someone who is from outside the bubble? We will not have that privilege and we will have to explain ourselves in plain terms. It’s not a trivial inconvenience: if we don’t exercise our ability to reduce the inferential distance (yes, I am guilty of the same sin) between “us” and “others” starting from ourselves we will always be unable to communicate our ideas properly.
But, again, I haven’t thought about this issue properly so I reserve to myself the faculty to take some time to refine or abdicate my arguments.
To be fair mine regarding the link-to-articles tendency is not a well-formed opinion, just something I’ve felt during some online and offline conversations. Especially from other fellow rationalists, when they quote a Scott’s article or an obscure post on the sequences when not absolutely needed.
By the way, I think it’s also a bad idea to demand more work from people you are communicating with, like informally requesting them to read a full article instead of trying to explain your point in plain terms.
Let’s put it this way: we can have the privilege to link/refer to articles/concepts in our bubble because we kinda know what we’re talking about and we are people who like to spend time reading, but what if we have to communicate with someone who is from outside the bubble? We will not have that privilege and we will have to explain ourselves in plain terms. It’s not a trivial inconvenience: if we don’t exercise our ability to reduce the inferential distance (yes, I am guilty of the same sin) between “us” and “others” starting from ourselves we will always be unable to communicate our ideas properly.
But, again, I haven’t thought about this issue properly so I reserve to myself the faculty to take some time to refine or abdicate my arguments.