This sounds great to me but I’m not the author, I just run the journal. We’d love to have you share your review of the article—“To register, please email info@theseedsofscience.org with your name, title (can be anything/optional), institution (same as title), and link (personal website, twitter, or linkedin is fine) for your listing on the gardeners page. From there, it’s pretty self-explanatory—I will add you to the mailing list and send you an email that includes the manuscript, our publication criteria, and a simple review form for recording votes/comments.”
rogersbacon1
Karma: 124
Friendship Forever (new EA cause area?)
Moral Weights of Six Animals, Considering Viewpoint Uncertainty—Seeds of Science call for reviewers
What are the Red Flags for Neural Network Suffering? - Seeds of Science call for reviewers
Moral Weights of Animals, Considering Viewpoint Uncertainty
Announcing the SoS Research Collective for independent researchers
“Attitudes Toward Artificial General Intelligence: Results from American Adults 2021 and 2023”—call for reviewers (Seeds of Science)
Epistemic Hell
The Future: Where are the Colors and the Sports?
“How to Escape from the Simulation”—Seeds of Science call for reviewers
“The Need for Long-term Research”—Seeds of Science call for reviewers
Is Progress Real?
“The Universe of Minds”—call for reviewers (Seeds of Science)
The Cult Deficit: Analysis and Speculation (v2.0)
Glad you enjoyed it!
great point re: friends and epistemics. Also makes me think of people who get rich and famous (cough cough SBF cough cough) and become surrounded by yes-men and yes-women instead of friends who can call them out on their bullshit.
I would say that reading the whole piece would clear up these issues—the second half (III and IV) is very different than the first and it might be hard to understand the whole thrust the argument without getting to the end.
I don’t disagree with all of your points here regarding summaries and communicative efficiency. I think my argument is that other values necessarily get sacrificed in the name of efficiency and clarity—aesthetic value, persuasive efficacy, diversity of style/tone. Insisting that every article aims for clarity/efficiency is going to standardize articles in a way that affects the author’s creativity and the mindset of the reader. There is nothing wrong with your preference for articles to conform to the “EA forum norms”—this is a style that is good for quick intake of information—but there are other goals that one can have in writing and reading. I would say my goal in this article is persuasive and inspirational, and as such there is (I hope) an artistic quality that is probably not found in many articles on here. Adding a summary, in my opinion, would detract from these goals/qualities. For example, as I said the second half of the article is very different than the first—a reader who knows what is coming to some degree might not feel the same emotions (and might not be inspired/persuaded) as they would if going in cold. While summaries might convince some people to read on, they also might stop some people from reading who would just plunge in otherwise. I would argue that the people who would be dissuaded from reading this article because of its summary are probably the people that need to read it the most, so in this sense of a summary is kind of self-defeating.
A summary is also good if you want the largest number of people to read your article, but there is no reason why this must be your goal as an author and it is not mine here. I would rather fewer people read the essay and actually think about it then more people read it but just skim.
Thanks for your comments! I never really had to make this argument before but I’ve had this feeling for some time. I can’t say I’m super familiar with the EA forum and the typical writing styles/formats, curious what you or others think about it.
Really enjoyed the writeup!
The book Albion’s Seed seems relevant here (see Scott Alexander’s book review). It argues that modern American regional variation in culture/politics can be traced back to the cultures of the people who immigrated to differents areas—Puritans, Quakers, Borderers, and Cavaliers.
Before I had any idea about any of this, I wrote that American society seems divided into two strata, one of which is marked by emphasis on education, interest in moral reforms, racial tolerance, low teenage pregnancy, academic/financial jobs, and Democratic party affiliation, and furthermore that this group was centered in the North. Meanwhile, now I learn that the North was settled by two groups (quakers and puritans) that when combined have emphasis on education, interest in moral reforms, racial tolerance, low teenage pregnancy, an academic and mercantile history, and were the heartland of the historical Whigs and Republicans who preceded the modern Democratic Party.
And I wrote about another stratum centered in the South marked by poor education, gun culture, culture of violence, xenophobia, high teenage pregnancy, militarism, patriotism, country western music, and support for the Republican Party. And now I learn that the South was settled by a group (borderers) noted even in the 1700s for its poor education, gun culture, culture of violence, xenophobia, high premarital pregnancy, militarism, patriotism, accent exactly like the modern country western accent, and support for the Democratic-Republicans who preceded the modern Republican Party.
I haven’t read the book (obviously) but it seems to focus more on qualitative historical arguments rather than quantitative. Did you come across any studies that have looked at british-US immigration patterns over historical timescales and how that might have affected modern day culture and social outcomes in these areas? This could be a good natural experiment to look at for intergenerational persistence studies as you got a rapid influx of immigrants from one religious/social subculture who were essentially able to start from scratch in a new region with limited immigration from people who were not in that subculture (not many puritans/northerners probably moved to the south/appalachia for much of 1700s/1800s).
what don’t you understand, seems pretty clear to me