On Better Mental Representations Part I: Adopting 'Thinking Tools'

I'm kinda confused why this is being downvoted. Curious if the people doing so could give more explicit feedback?

It seems rambling and lacking a clear point or a structure that I can follow.

Do you disagree? Do you see valuable content here? If so, I’d be glad if you could summarize the thrust of this essay!

I agree with the rambly thing, and am not that surprised that it got downvoted at all, I guess just sort of surprised it got downvoted as heavily as it did. (It's the sort of post I personally would have probably neither downvoted nor upvoted)

The thing I got out of this post (and the previous one) was a better understanding of the "the way you process information is a bit arbitrary." This wasn't a new point (it's pretty well covered by the entire Sequences), but both posts dived into a bunch of concrete examples that fleshed out some of the details around "how my lens can perceive it's flaws."

I agree the point wasn't made very clearly, and towards the end starts throwing a few too many concepts out there at once while speaking in a somewhat over-the-top tone. I felt like this was counterbalanced a bit by hitting some notes that LW posts haven't often hit of late, such as actually providing citations and grounding philosophical ideas in scientific fact. (I admit I didn't look too deeply into either of those, and it's possible it's just sort of goodharting on that concept, but on the margin I'd like to encourage that sort of thing on LW more)

Mostly I just didn't want Will to end up getting quietly downvoted with no feedback, because I felt like was enough substance here that, if some of the particular shortcomings were addressed, there'd be a solid post here and I'd expect future good posts as well.

[On an even more meta note, we're still figuring out exactly how strict the standards for frontpage should be, now that it's up to admins to move things there. This post was on the fence - it checks the official checkboxes for frontpage, could have used more clarity, conciseness and structure and maybe some subtle cultural tweaks (some of the writing style felt... more like a Medium post than a LW post? which I'm not sure how to weight)]

[-]Said Achmiz7y30

I agree with the rambly thing, and am not that surprised that it got downvoted at all, I guess just sort of surprised it got downvoted as heavily as it did.

… is −5 really “heavily”? That’s, like, 2 people’s worth of downvotes.

Anyway, yeah, my feedback is definitely “rewrite this post so that it’s clearly comprehensible”.

By this I mean: (a) make it comprehensible; (b) make it clear that it is comprehensible. The former without the latter looks like, e.g., “yes, it’s actually clear what is being said once you do indeed hunker down and read the whole thing carefully, straight through, from beginning to end”. This is insufficient, however, because it is not at all sensible for me to read every single post, closely and carefully, from beginning to end, just on the chance that it might be comprehensible and then also might contain useful insights.

So make it not just comprehensible, but clearly so: write well and engagingly; include a summary—preferably, both at the start and at the end; if your post is long-ish, or is not written quite so engagingly that one can read through it breathlessly, as if reading a fiction story, then include proper “scaffolding”—i.e., organize your post into a hierarchical structure, with sections titled with proper headings (and for god’s sake make your headings actual heading elements, not just bold text—that way, it’s much easier to scan/skim/etc., and it means that tables of contents can be automatically generated for your post!); and so on.

Is this a lot to ask? Well, yes, but on the other hand all of these things are nothing more than “ordinary standards of good writing”! And if you don’t even try, if you don’t do any of these things, then I have to wonder how much you care about whether I read your post… in which case, the natural follow-up question is, how much should I care about reading your post?

[On an even more meta note, we’re still figuring out exactly how strict the standards for frontpage should be, now that it’s up to admins to move things there. This post was on the fence—it checks the official checkboxes for frontpage, could have used more clarity, conciseness and structure and maybe some subtle cultural tweaks (some of the writing style felt… more like a Medium post than a LW post? which I’m not sure how to weight)]

This reminds me of something that I’ve been meaning to ask for a while. Does LW support (policy-wise, I mean) the idea of posting something on one’s personal blog, and then expressing some preference about whether or not the mods should promote it to the front page? Note, I don’t mean “promote this, guys! it’s real great!”, but the other way around: “this is not really front-page worthy, imo, I am not comfortable with it being promoted” (vs. the presumptive default of “if you find this worthy of the front page, by all means promote it”). Or is the idea that if I post something that I don’t think should be front-paged, then I shouldn’t post it at all? (I can certainly see the sense in the latter view, if indeed this is the official policy—I’m just trying to figure out what the norms are.)

[-]Raemon7y20

I pretty much agree with this. (fyi, this got upvoted and downvoted multiple times today, if it was a single -5 downvote I wouldn't have made my comment)

Note, I don’t mean “promote this, guys! it’s real great!”, but the other way around:

We've talked about it, and the only hesitation I have around it is complexity cost. (i.e. there's a list of flags about-as-useful you might add to a post page, but which collectively might make for a weirdly high number of choices to make when posting).

[-]Will Lorca7y10

Oh, it's not pretty much front page worthy the way I wrote it. There's no question about that. It's pretty conversational (rambly as you guys say) and is using persuasion at the end. I think that's a big no-no to be on the front page.

Also, I'm new here. And I'm glad to have to have found this online. I actually thought that one has to "submit" to the mods something to be considered to be in the front page. I was looking for that button when I wrote my first article which I think was front-page material. I really wanted it to be considered for the front page. It got there. I don't know how.

If you have read the first one, it's quite different as to how it's written.

This second one was a more personal blog post. This was something that I just wanted to have on my personal blog like a series. It's not addressed to the usual member of the community. I had a gut feel that it won't speak to the usual member of the community. This confirms it.

I'm glad that the LW community is quick to chastise things like that and, so far, I like it here. I'll be more clearer in my next posts here and do away with that conversational style and stick to "technical" topics: like things in my academic research.

Thank you Raemon for the comment and for asking for reasons and feedback. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Said Achmiz for engaging. I now have a better grasp of the content that one should post here and the type of writing.

Feel free to point me to a better direction in the future. I appreciate it.

Rock and roll!