Just want to briefly join in with the chorus here: I’m tentatively sympathetic to the claim, but I think requiring people to spend several hours reading and meditating on a bunch of other content – without explaining why, or how each ties into your core claim – and then refusing to engage with anyone who hasn’t done so, is very bad practice. I might even say laziness. At the very least, wildly unrealistic – you are effectively filtering for people who are already familiar with all the content you linked to, which seems like a bad way to convince people of things.
Having skimmed the links, it is very non-obvious how many of them tie directly into your claim about the EA community’s relationship with feedback loops. Plausibly if I read and meditated on each of them carefully, I would spot the transcendent theme linking all of them together – but that is very costly, and I am a busy person with no particular ex ante reason to believe it would be a good use of scarce time.
If you want to convince us of something, paying the costs in time and thought and effort to connect those dots is your job, not ours.
Well, of course you don’t think it’s bad practice, or you wouldn’t have done it.
The interesting question is why, and who’s right.
At the very least, I claim there’s decent evidence that it’s ineffective practice, in this venue: your post and comments here have been downvoted six ways from Sunday, which seems like a worse way to advocate for your claim than a different approach that got upvoted.
At the very least, I claim there’s decent evidence that it’s ineffective practice, in this venue: your post and comments here have been downvoted six ways from Sunday, which seems like a worse way to advocate for your claim than a different approach that got upvoted.
We are using very different metrics to track effectiveness.
I think people are over-downvoting this, but it does seem to carry a kinda unpleasant assertion that I’m making this claim because of some irrational emotional aversion, which I don’t especially appreciate.
I think the claim that it’s very costly is just clearly and straightforwardly true. You’re effectively asking me to commit several hours of my time to this post – an order of magnitude more time than I’d usually spend on even a very good EA Forum post. Free time is scarce and precious, and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on this is very high.
You might claim spending that much time on this is worth it, but the size of the benefit doesn’t change the fact that the demanded cost is very high.
I think the claim that it’s very costly is just clearly and straightforwardly true. You’re effectively asking me to commit several hours of my time to this post – an order of magnitude more time than I’d usually spend on even a very good EA Forum post. Free time is scarce and precious, and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on this is very high.
I’m asking you to do this iff you yourself feel that you want to do it.
Just want to briefly join in with the chorus here: I’m tentatively sympathetic to the claim, but I think requiring people to spend several hours reading and meditating on a bunch of other content – without explaining why, or how each ties into your core claim – and then refusing to engage with anyone who hasn’t done so, is very bad practice. I might even say laziness. At the very least, wildly unrealistic – you are effectively filtering for people who are already familiar with all the content you linked to, which seems like a bad way to convince people of things.
Having skimmed the links, it is very non-obvious how many of them tie directly into your claim about the EA community’s relationship with feedback loops. Plausibly if I read and meditated on each of them carefully, I would spot the transcendent theme linking all of them together – but that is very costly, and I am a busy person with no particular ex ante reason to believe it would be a good use of scarce time.
If you want to convince us of something, paying the costs in time and thought and effort to connect those dots is your job, not ours.
I agree that it’s sorta lazy, but I strongly disagree that it is bad practice.
Well, of course you don’t think it’s bad practice, or you wouldn’t have done it.
The interesting question is why, and who’s right.
At the very least, I claim there’s decent evidence that it’s ineffective practice, in this venue: your post and comments here have been downvoted six ways from Sunday, which seems like a worse way to advocate for your claim than a different approach that got upvoted.
We are using very different metrics to track effectiveness.
I’m curious about why this feels very costly to you, and also about how that feeling is showing up for you in your body and in your mind.
I think people are over-downvoting this, but it does seem to carry a kinda unpleasant assertion that I’m making this claim because of some irrational emotional aversion, which I don’t especially appreciate.
I think the claim that it’s very costly is just clearly and straightforwardly true. You’re effectively asking me to commit several hours of my time to this post – an order of magnitude more time than I’d usually spend on even a very good EA Forum post. Free time is scarce and precious, and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on this is very high.
You might claim spending that much time on this is worth it, but the size of the benefit doesn’t change the fact that the demanded cost is very high.
I’m asking you to do this iff you yourself feel that you want to do it.
I’m not asserting that you’re acting from an irrational emotional aversion.
I was genuinely curious about how the very-costly feeling was showing up in your body and in your mind.