Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?(alexwennerberg.com)
8 pointsby epestr3 hours ago5 comments
  • throwawayy67672 hours ago
    It's a mix of bad writing ability, contrived arguments (coming up with weird hypotheticals or simulating what an opponent would say), cargo-culting rationalist thought leaders (Yarvin, Scott, Yudkowsky, gwern) and the concealing of unsavory ideas.

    There's also a culture of not knowing when to stop posting and touch grass - when all your friends are way too online and probably also rationalists and much of your identity and status is tied to online posting, you invest a lot in cultivating that social identity and signaling to your community, even to a degree that would look unhealthy to normies.

  • senderista3 hours ago
    So that's where Claude's verbosity comes from.
    • throwawayy67672 hours ago
      Not sure about the verbosity but that's probably where the useless and annoying claudisms come from, they are rewarded by (rationalist adjacent) users because they feel good about understanding the jargon and it reinforces the feeling of communicating with a superior alien intelligence (and that oneself is also somewhat superior for being able to understand it).
  • ai_critic3 hours ago
    Most of them are too smart to have brief thoughts, but not smart enough to have succinct ones.

    There's also rhetorical advantage in spewing so much stuff that you snow your reader under a blizzard; what's worse, some of that tends to be true.

  • vrganj3 hours ago
    Because a defining feature of those people is confusing the appearance of seriousness with seriousness itself, just like they confuse their ideological preference with rationality.
  • eimrine3 hours ago
    Rationalism is for people who have the reading skill. If someone prefers short videos, it means that the doors of rationalism is closed for him.
    • defrost3 hours ago
      The complaint is about the lack of writing skill:

        Nearly every blog post I have read in this ecosystem, even the rare one that contains some good ideas, is painfully long and extremely tedious.
      • eimrinean hour ago
        My controversial thesis was about author's poor reading skill. The dilemma of the rationalist writer is about whether be skipped by wizards or be understandable by maglesses.

        You can take the truthest truth ever like "god does not exist". This statement is rationalist and true and short so the author is supposed to cry with a tears of happiness. But making a wisard to behave like this requires something more thorough to be sent. Maybe the author's post also has a chance to become a rationalist if it would be a little bit... longer?