In favour of terseness

Short posts are bad at crossing inferential distances. They limit your readers to those who already know, or almost know, what you're talking about. (Also see: Explainers Shoot High. Aim Low!)

For example, if you were writing a scientific paper and going for extreme terseness you would give the data then stop. There'd be no abstract, no explanation of previous work and surrounding context, and no guiding towards conclusions. It would be an incredibly inefficient way to convey knowledge.

Another example is computer programs. Programmers try to avoid repeating themselves, but not to the point where they attempt to hit the Kolmogorov complexity (code so unreadable it's unprovably correct!) or omit all tests (which are by definition redundant).

A more personal example is a post I made recently: Building your own Quantum Fourier Transform. I did not explain how to use the little quantum circuit inspector in enough detail, and so all the feedback was "I don't get it". I try to always keep in mind that saying things like "a superposition assigns a weighting to all the classical states" just doesn't translate, you have to break it down every time, but I didn't pay attention to that nagging doubt.

Personally, I find the Sequences, both individually and collectively, to be a model of clear writing. But they're not at all terse, are they? Yvain writes long blog posts that I'd put above Eliezer's for quality of writing. Moldbug writes at insane length, and yet always very readably. But then, some other long posts I find myself thinking, oh, get on with it, get to the point already, whatever the point is. Or they just say the same thing in ten different ways, as if adopting Paul Graham's advice on how to seem articulate. I can't give examples because I don't pay much attention to those.

Short vs. long is not the issue. Structure is the issue.

perhaps experienced rationalists here could write nice and concise posts that give short and clear answers to complicated questions

I'm not interested in short and clear answers to complicated questions. Or to put that more tersely, I'm not interested in answers on their own. My reaction will be, "That's nice, but how did you get there? Why should I care about your bald pronouncement?" It's like being given a purported map of buried treasure that is just a blank sheet of paper with an X marked on it.

A few (concise) notes:

• Being concise or verbose is a false dilemma. You can structure your post so that it can be both. (I posted about it here years ago.)

• You assume that if "terseness makes posts more readable" to you, then it applies equally to everyone. It doesn't.

• Crossing an inferential gap is harder in a short post, unless you are an amazing writer.

• If you scan through the site carefully, there are plenty of quality short posts here.

I'd be interested in seeing a trial run of this kind of post. Do you have an interesting belief that you think you could communicate in a compact manner?

Here is a try: If I had to summarize my view on free will it would be: Free will is what deterministic decision making feels like from the inside. Humans are capable of considering alternative courses of action, eventually deciding what to do. The process of choosing occurs deterministically and is what we call free will.

One reason people write long posts is that they want to anticipate objections (that may or may not be nit-picky). The reason for this is that having to modify your views as a result of the discussion is generally seen as a failure.

The solution to this is to see posting and discussion less as a competitive game the purpose of which is "winning" and more of a cooperative game the purpose of which is learning. That goes for both posters and commentators, obviously.

That said, you often need to explain difficult ideas in detail in order for others to understand, as noted below.

No.

"Anyone can build a bridge. It takes an engineer to barely build a bridge."

I heard this on a train, I've never been able to find the source, and I use it to explain the difference between solving a problem and elegantly solving a problem. Another perspective (attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller but I'm not confident about that attribution):

"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."

It seems like you have several separate things in mind: readability, information density, arguments masquerading as true causes of beliefs, trustworthiness of "experienced rationalists," and the value of the "main point" vs disclaimers and qualification. Do you have an example post in mind, and specific suggestions for an improved version? I'm not sure if I'm about to respond to you, or just ramble. I understand that it's hard to call someone out without being mean, but these meta discussions seem to go nowhere without specific examples. (That said, the rest of my comment is not any better in this regard. Also, feel free to use any of my posts or comments for target practice.)

I agree that LW falls short on readability. Most people, LW posters included, are not good writers to begin with. Conciseness is one absent virtue among many. On the other hand, extremely information-dense texts can also be unreadable. Also, conversational, forceful, and polemical styles -- which are easier and more entertaining to read than academic styles heavy with caveats -- accompany lower epistemic standards. It's possible to be highly readable, informative, and rigorously correct, but it's hard. Littering your claims with "I think"s and "probably"s is a poor solution. Even if your main worry is coming off as too authoritative, such ugly filler qualifying language can be replaced with specific qualifications, possibly in a preface or footnote.

Your "murder is wrong" example is a poorly-constructed sentence, sure, for reasons beyond the above. But the details and qualifications are the real content of that statement. I don't think that's because "murder is wrong" is an uncharacteristically content-free claim. For any basic principle or sweeping generalization, there will be cases where it obviously works, cases where it obviously doesn't, and the real information is in where you draw the line. (And that statement applies to itself. I may need to elaborate in a separate post.)

I already see over-reliance on simple/abstract/principled arguments and beliefs as a weakness of LW discourse. This is a shame, because people here should have a huge advantage in terms of consequentialist reasoning and the ability to recognize and discuss tradeoffs without knee-jerk responses.

Regarding your other points, I agree that people often present arguments which do not include the true causes of their beliefs, and that this is bad. I also (relatedly) have enough confidence in very few people here such that a mere statement of their beliefs would be informative.

Presumably this is because of the social convention where you’re expected to back up any public belief with arguments, so that other people can attempt to poke holes in them. I find this strange because the arguments people present rarely have anything to do with why they believe those things.

We post our beliefs hoping to convince other people. Even if we're not certain of a belief, we generally intend for the readers to approach our own degree of confidence.

We give the best arguments we know for the beliefs (and if we're good rationalists and are also honest and confident, we also post the best arguments we know against them.) Sometimes these aren't the true reasons we hold those beliefs, because we're not luminous or introspective enough. But they are still arguments that can be evaluated and they are legitimate, admissible evidence that people should indeed update on.

If we didn't give any evidence but just stated our beliefs, then the only reason anyone would be convinced by them would be that they trusted our strength as rationalists. And such trust is generally misplaced, precisely because as you point out, even when we try to honestly analyze why we believe something, we are often mistaken, biased, etc.

If you also consider dishonest, manipulative, or just plainly irrational actors, then the mere fact they claim to believe something is very hard to update on correctly. Whereas the justifications they give for the belief can still be evaluated and provide at least some evidence.

I like terseness also (so does Hanson).

But I believe in letting a thousand flowers bloom. Some folks write a lot, because they are at their best this way. Who am I to tell them they are wrong?

Even here, I only trust about three people's epistemic standards enough to follow up on two-sentence summaries of their opinions. More if they're domain experts. Less if the subject's controversial.

Opinions unsupported by argument are of no value to me. Why are they to you? Are they useful for something? Or do you value them terminally?

I think a fair portion of Lesswrong actually has complex reasons for holding the beliefs that they are holding.

On most interesting question I have a position that evolved over years through being exposed to different arguments. If I write a full version of why I believe what I believe that's going to be long. I rather focus on making those points that might be important for the audience with whom I'm interacting.

Journalism has been infected with a style of stream of consciousness random anecdotes. Apparently many go for that. I don't. I read a few paragraphs, start to get agitated, and recall "When you talk like this I can't help but wonder - is there a point?" Verbal fog of this kind is a good sign of a poorly thought out idea, in my experience, or no particular idea at all. But if you blow enough smoke, you can obscure what's happening until the end of the article. For some, that's ideal - passing the time and "justifying" a little check next to "I read an article; I'm a smart and informed person".

If the goal is communication, terse is good. The more concise and streamlined you can make your message, the easier it is to see the relationship between the parts and grok it.

What helps on longer arguments is to give the reader a roadmap of where you're going, why you're going, and how you plan to get there. That roadmap gives the reader motivation to read, and sign posts so he can know keep track of far he's come along the trip.

Particularly on the internet, you'd better be prepared to motivate a different type of reader with a payoff, and keep him motivated by showing him along the way that you're continuing to make progress toward that payoff for him.

Some people want to pass the time with a soothing ride through the fog, but I think this list has fewer of those types and more of the latter types. We want a payoff, and will move on when we don't see one coming.

Unless your idea is very obvious, most people will absorb it better if you offer examples.

Personally, I like long posts because I need time to an idea things through, and do that more efficiently while I am also reading about that idea, instead of reading it through then finishing and becoming vulnerable to the distractions of the internet again.

It took you more than a sentence or two to explain why you like terseness.

terseness is good because it's a lot harder to make a simple idea or belief needlessly complex if you're terse, but it's also hard to use it to explain complex things.

I strongly agree with this post, people on this site talk way, way more than they need to in order to make the point.

short and clear answers to complicated questions

Clarity is of course desirable. Shortness is not always helpful.

Here is an example of a long post that requires a good deal of reader perseverance to arrive at its main point. To wit, CDC obesity studies since the mid-20th century underwent a change in demographic sampling partway through (with more blacks and Hispanics sampled), resulting in a likely overstatement of obesity trend statistics.

The post title gives a hint, but the article would have been improved by indicating where it was headed much earlier on.

In contrast, this post delivers its message regarding the interpretation of "accurate more than 90% of the time" (including definitions of sensitivity and specificity) in a straightforward manner. I wouldn't describe the post as terse, but I give it high marks for content/length.

I had already noticed I needed to adjust in this direction. I'm going to try being more concise and see how it goes.

Specifically, 50 words or less for 50 comments. (#50)