Why Rationalist Blog Posts Are Painfully Long
Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?
Alex Wennerberg argues that rationalist bloggers like Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky write excessively long posts, mistaking verbosity for thoroughness. He points to Gwern's 9,000-word essay claiming nicotine isn't addictive, which was later debunked. What's missing, he says, is wisdom: the discretion to know what's worth saying and what isn't. The community's bias toward unconventional ideas leads them to treat sheer volume as evidence of value.
It seems to me that, in this community, verbosity is a substitute for thoroughness: surely, if someone wrote a lot about something, and is able to demonstrate that by producing a large volume of text, they must have something worthwhile to say about it?
- fwlr
From the article:
Consider when blogger Gwern explained that nicotine, actually, is not addictive, and is good for you, as long as you don't smoke it, over the course of 9,000 words, with over 100 references. It turns out, actually, nicotine is addictive, and is bad for you even if you don't smoke it, as you probably already obviously knew.
The first sentence is a link to the Gwern essay, which does indeed have over 100 references and is rigorously argued and appropriately caveated.
The second sentence is a link to a Substack essay, which has two screenshots of two individuals self-reporting “nicotine bad” on Twitter, one of whom smoked it.
By the content and construction of these sentences, the author makes it abundantly clear that he finds the second overwhelmingly more convincing than the first, and that the second essentially refutes the first.
Given that the only evidentiary standard this author appears to be able to apply is “how much does this agree what what I already believe”, I find that I agree with his claim that extra words don’t make his articles better, and I would extend this to say that fewer words would make them better still, with perfection achieved when the number of words reaches zero.
- sien
The Economist is so good in this respect.
A smart, very good writer will write something and get to the point quickly. Articles are mostly a page or less.
Writing like that respects people's time.
Many bloggers could do with writing things more briefly.
The author of this piece also makes a very good point that often long pieces go into weird corners of their own argument without thinking about their own assumptions.
- bel8
It takes skill and effort to condense knowledge.
"I would have written a shorter letter, but did not have the time." - Blaise Pascal in “Lettres Provinciales,” 1657.
- springtail5
This is basically a dunk piece. Scott’s and gwern’s posts are often long because they contain arguments, which ironically the author does not use, other to point to one gwern post. He says that rationalists substitute thoroughness for verbosity when gwern’s post does the exact opposite!
It’s easy to dismiss the argument with “lol nicotine bad”, but I think it’s good to examine studies on the addictiveness of nicotine when not smoked, and not assume it would be just like smoking. There are plenty of things that seem obvious but are not and it’s always good to be rigorous.
- girvo
> It turns out, actually, nicotine is addictive, and is bad for you even if you don't smoke it, as you probably already obviously knew.
This is not the point, but I’m very confused by the link that is linked as evidence on that line? It doesn’t match the sentence it’s attached to
Link in question: https://psychotechnology.substack.com/p/a-love-song-to-nicot...