Previously: The 2023 LessWrong Review: The Basic Ask
There's one week left in the Discussion Phase of the 2023 Review. Here's a few things you might want to spend that time doing, in escalating order of effort:
Review three posts, without stressing much about the details. Go the Quick Review[1] page, pick some posts you remember and had opinions about. Reread them, and write a review.
Think about which posts should be in the Best of LessWrong. Go to the Advanced Review[2] page, look at which posts are currently in the top 50, and at the posts that aren't in the top 50 which you think should be. Write reviews arguing for posts you think are underappreciated.
Think big picture, longform thoughts about the conversations from 2023. After reviewing several posts, write a top level post with the 2023 Longform Review tag, exploring multiple posts from 2023 and how they tie together with today's thinking.
The Basic Ask: Reviews worth highlighting
If your review gets at least 10 karma, it'll appear like this:
Since the first sentence is previewed, I recommend opening with the most important information (or, something that convinces readers you have something interesting to say, worth clicking to read more).
My suggestion: write your review as you normally would, but at the end, go back to the opening paragraph and rewrite it to convey the key info.
LessWrong users will upvote reviews as they normally would comments. The moderation team will be particularly upvoting reviews that convey novel information (such as specific flaws that hadn't been mentioned before, or or specific ways the post has proven valuable).
I'm also interested in reviews that succinctly summarize existing discussion (such as previous critical comments or further intellectual work that happened in the comments).
Specific prompts for reviewing:
- What does this post add to the conversation?
- How did this post affect you, your thinking, and your actions?
- Does it make accurate claims? Does it carve reality at the joints? How do you know?
- Is there a subclaim of this post that you can test?
- What followup work would you like to see building on this post?
Prompts for Self-Reviews
If you're an author reviewing your own post, I'd suggest talking about:
- What have you learned since then? Have you changed your mind or your ontology?
- What would you change about the post? (Consider actually changing it)
- What do you most want people to know about this post, for deciding whether to read or review-vote on it?
- How concretely have you (or others you know of) used or built on the post? How has it contributed to a larger conversation?
For self reviews, I again recommend having the opening sentence convey new information (so the one-line preview has useful content).
It's not that informative to start with "I still stand by the claims of this post and think it was important". It's more useful to open with specific ways you've seen the post provide value, or further work that built on it. Or, the biggest way you've changed your mind (even if you mostly stand by it)
What should be in the Best of LessWrong?
Which posts should readers be encouraged to read, if they're new to LessWrong, or just haven't caught up on everything that happened in 2023?
This question isn't just about "which posts you like." It's helpful to think about the relative values of posts, and which ones you think are most important for people to read. (Or, most important for a given category).
If you think a given post is overrated or underappreciated, write up a review arguing so.
The Advanced Review page sorts the posts by the winner
Longform Reflection
Some of my favorite writing to come out of past Annual Reviews were not individual reviews, but longform posts that delved more deeply into either:
- Really digging into an individual post (and maybe teasing out new abstract principles).
- Exploring a collection of posts that formed a larger conversation, and reflecting on how that overall conversation fit into the present day.
Some examples of the former is Zack Davis': Firming Up Not-Lying Around Its Edge-Cases Is Less Broadly Useful Than One Might Initially Think
Some examples of the latter:
- Vanessa Kosoy's Critical review of Christiano's disagreements with Yudkowsky.
- Ben Pace's Ben Pace's Controversial Picks for the 2020 Review
- My own Implications of Civilizational Inadequacy (reviewing mazes/simulacra/etc), which looked at "what are the practical implications of Moral Mazes or Simulacra Levels?"
I do notably have critiques of some of those pieces (including my own). Eliezer notably didn't feel well represented by Vanessa's piece and some of the followup discussion there seemed slightly confused to me – but the process of discussing seemed like it at least got those confusions into the open.
(I haven't shipped it yet, but I'll soon be making it so posts with the https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/2023-longform-reviews tag show up in the frontpage Review widget, so they get more visibility)
If you write a longform review of a specific post, I recommend also giving that post a short comment-review that links to your post and conveys the core takeaways.
Thank you again for helping LessWrong reflect upon itself. Remember, the first line of your review will be shown on all posts during the Voting Phase, and if it has 10+ karma it'll be shown forevermore on the Best of LessWrong page. So, try to make it actively useful!