I think these points are pretty obvious and probably were already in many people’s heads. I think probably many people could’ve easily written approximately this. If I recall correctly, I wrote it in ~2 hours, just after the thought initially struck me.
So I think this is one of a fair few cases where I’ve added value by plucking a low-hanging fruit that it seems surprising no one else had plucked.
It seems to me that it should be possible for much more of this sort of thing to be spotted and done by non-me people than currently happens. I’m not sure how best to make that happen. One approach I’ve attempted since March 2020 is just saying this sort of thing a lot and hoping.
(Hopefully obvious caveats: Of course there are already non-me people doing this, but I think there could be more of this. And of course there are also many useful things to do other than just these sorts of quick low-hanging fruit posts.)
The first two points aren’t at all specific to EA, so it’s plausible that those points were already said concisely in an article from outside the EA community and that I could’ve just linkposted that and added the third point. But I didn’t know of such an article and no one has pointed me to one yet, and this was quick enough to write that I still think it made sense to just write it rather than hunt around for existing work first.
Some quick self-review thoughts:
I still stand by these points and by the implicit claims that they’re worth stating and that they’re often not adhered to.
On probably >10% of docs I give feedback on, I finish at least one comment with “See also https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uGt5HfRTYi9xwF6i8/3-suggestions-about-jargon-in-ea ”
I think these points are pretty obvious and probably were already in many people’s heads. I think probably many people could’ve easily written approximately this. If I recall correctly, I wrote it in ~2 hours, just after the thought initially struck me.
So I think this is one of a fair few cases where I’ve added value by plucking a low-hanging fruit that it seems surprising no one else had plucked.
Most of the other examples are my collections, e.g. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JQQAQrunyGGhzE23a/database-of-existential-risk-estimates and the pingbacks from Suggestion: EAs should post more summaries and collections. (I think some examples other than this post are better examples since they probably added more value.)
It seems to me that it should be possible for much more of this sort of thing to be spotted and done by non-me people than currently happens. I’m not sure how best to make that happen. One approach I’ve attempted since March 2020 is just saying this sort of thing a lot and hoping.
(Hopefully obvious caveats: Of course there are already non-me people doing this, but I think there could be more of this. And of course there are also many useful things to do other than just these sorts of quick low-hanging fruit posts.)
The first two points aren’t at all specific to EA, so it’s plausible that those points were already said concisely in an article from outside the EA community and that I could’ve just linkposted that and added the third point. But I didn’t know of such an article and no one has pointed me to one yet, and this was quick enough to write that I still think it made sense to just write it rather than hunt around for existing work first.