Thread for making 2019 Review accountability commitments

post by jacobjacob · 2020-12-18T05:07:25.533Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

Contents

  Eat that frog
  How to participate
    Write a comment and commit to what you want to accomplish this Review season. When the end date comes, I will follow up on your comment to ask you how it went. It is expected you'll reply with a brief report (can be as short as a sentence).
  Important disclaimer
None
6 comments

The LessWrong 2019 Review [LW · GW] is upon us. We're out of the nomination phase, and starting the review phase. 121 posts have passed into this second stage. 

Now we join forces to answer some crucial questions: 

If you've wanted to help in this endeavor, but haven't gotten around to it... then maybe this is for you. 

Eat that frog

Sometimes engaging with LessWrong is pure fun. Good opinions just keep coming to you. You ride a wave of excitement. 

Other times, however, you need to roll up your sleeves and Eat That Frog. 

In an inspirational haze, we spent the wild night of 2019 producing a ton of content. Now we have woken up the morning after. With the dry lucidity of hindsight, time has come to atone for our sins. Or celebrate our victories. 

One of the most beautiful things about LessWrong is our joint vision of a better way to do Science on the internet. We know that Facebook, Twitter, and the journal system are utterly broken. We know that, truly, so much more is possible.  

But, well, if we want good things to happen to us, we need to put in the work. 

All those things that seemed a bit schlepy, and like maybe-it-would-be-good-if-someone-but-not-me-did-them-some-day?

Now is the time. 

How to participate

Write a comment and commit to what you want to accomplish this Review season. When the end date comes, I will follow up on your comment to ask you how it went. It is expected you'll reply with a brief report (can be as short as a sentence).

I'll probably celebrate things that seem like victories, but I don't plan to give particular negative reinforcement otherwise. I trust that the act of committing and following up in public will handle that on its own.

Here are examples of commitments: 

Important disclaimer

This is not for everyone.

Some people hate public commitments. If so, don't join. It's cool. 

For others, like me, public accountability works pretty great. Knowing that people are watching just makes me want to be the best version of myself that I can. 

What's more, different people relate to the Review in different ways. If you work best being guided by motivations of pure curiosity and excitement, then, by all means, you do you. Don't mind this post and don't let it seep guilt into whatever mojo you've got going. :) 

To all, I wish you the best of skill. 

6 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by jacobjacob · 2020-12-18T05:15:40.414Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My commitments: 

  • Operationalize three forecasting questions
  • Run one MTurk/Positly survey
  • Have at least one 2h conversation about a particular post, and write up a review after, almost regardless of how I feel the conversation went

By January 11th. 

(Some of these are derived with an eye to experimenting with different onsite review methods, in addition to just reviewing)

I'm starting with these, and might add more later. 

Replies from: jacobjacob
comment by jacobjacob · 2021-01-12T20:24:46.059Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I failed to meet all my commitments. 

Operationalize three forecasting questions

Smashed this one and created 20+ questions. 

Run one MTurk/Positly survey

I have a beginning draft of a survey for the Secret of Our Success. I hoped I could finish it up yesterday, but instead I had work on shipping the LessWrong Books. Will see if I can get it out later this week. 

Have at least one 2h conversation about a particular post, and write up a review after, almost regardless of how I feel the conversation went

Didn't happen and didn't really come close. 

---

My main post-mortem is that I had multiple calendar reminders about the commitment, but for all of them I postponed them into the future. Until it was the last weekend and I was out of time. I should've spent more meta-cognition during some of them, thinking about how much time I would need to complete the tasks on time. 

comment by DanielFilan · 2020-12-24T06:24:05.599Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I want to write up at least two more reviews by January the 11th.

Replies from: jacobjacob
comment by jacobjacob · 2021-01-12T00:03:29.624Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Following up on this: how did it go? 

Replies from: DanielFilan
comment by DanielFilan · 2021-01-12T19:25:41.617Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I ended up writing 3 [LW(p) · GW(p)] more [LW(p) · GW(p)] reviews [LW(p) · GW(p)]. They each took about an hour to write. I'm reasonably happy with them given those constraints - they could be better if I spent a day on each, but I think I hit the right part of the trade-off curve. I'd expect the reviews of Olah's post [LW · GW] and the deep double descent post [LW · GW] to be pretty useful for non-expert readers, telling them things they didn't already know. I'm a little bit sad that they didn't get somewhat more acclaim, but such is life.

Replies from: jacobjacob
comment by jacobjacob · 2021-01-12T20:19:27.061Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Nice job. 

Reviews seem to me to have a lower karma on average than either posts, or comments on currently popular posts.