From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 14 1999 - 16:30:39 MST
dave gobel wrote:
>As I read the various threads, I am struck by one thing - the written word,
>english, human language is very hard pressed to convey sufficiently accurate
>and precise meanings. ... Its like seeing the OZ of language hiding
>behind the curtain and he's having a devil of a time keeping up with you ...
>Many of the conversations go thru an evolution of : an idea, assertion, or
>announcement, followed by simple interesting reactions/coments, followed by
>secondary reaction/beliefs, followed by rebuttal, then semi-personal attacks
>then fracturing of the subject, then attenuation of interest. ...
The related thing that most strikes me is the unfortunate
lack of paper-length contributions on the topics which
frequently appear on this list.
There is a natural spectrum of "length" of contributions on
a topic, ranging from off-the-top one sentence comments
to detailed book-length or longer analyses. In between are
email posts and paper-length discussions.
Each of these lengths has its place, but contributions
lengths should increase as topics become more important
and as conversations about them mature with time.
Shorter contributions are more flexible and responsive,
allow discussants to more quickly adapt to changing
feedback about what others find interesting and
understandable. Longer contributions, however, can
support deeper and more elaborate examination of
topics, and can make conversations more accessible to
wider audiences.
On many novel topics on this list I think discussants
too quickly begin with email, and would do better
initially with the flexibility of a phone conversation.
On many older long-discussed topics, however, I think
conceptual progress is hindered by the failure of
most of you to move on to paper-length contributions.
Now a few people have, over the years, written books
on the topics we discuss. But these mostly come off
as idiosyncratic personal visions, instead of part
of a conversation within a larger community. They
mostly give the impression that the author thought up
all this stuff by him/herself, and rarely cite others
who they are responding to or building on.
Why? It seems to me it is because of jumping too
quickly to book-length contributions, where paper
length contributions would be more appropriate.
When you get a new idea, call up a friend and talk. When
that gets stale, write it up as a short post, and try it
out on an email list or newsgroup. But after the topic
gets hashed out a lot in email, and discussions there
don't seem so productive anymore, if you think the topic
still worth pursuing, please, MOVE ON TO WRITING PAPERS!
Now maybe the first paper-length contribution on a topic
will seem an idiosyncratic personal vision, but after
that good papers should cite each other and respond to
each other, just as good email posts do. And only after
the conversation of papers seems to be getting stale
and limited by the depth of analysis possible in a paper,
only then should you really think about writing a book.
I think you can infer some things about a topic from
the length of contributions made on it. If you only
ever see short contributions on a topic, you might
reasonably infer that people don't really take it that
seriously. Either they don't care enough about it to
take the next step, or the topic doesn't withstand
careful scrutiny; those people who tried to write
longer analyses realized it's all bunk and gave up.
So what do you guys want other folks to infer about
the topics that come up over and over on this list?
The "it's science fiction, not science" critique
can be in part translated as "sure they'll throw out
a few half-baked ideas in a novel, but anyone who
thinks about it carefully will realize it doesn't
make sense."
Well, do these ideas make sense or not?
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