​I have a tool for thinking that I call “steelman solitaire”. I have found that it comes to much better conclusions than doing “free-style” thinking, so I thought I should share it with more people. 

In summary, it consists of arguing with yourself in the program Workflowy/Roam/any infinitely-nesting-bullet-points software, alternating between writing a steelman of an argument, a steelman of a counter-argument, a steelman of a counter-counter-argument, etc. 

In this post I’ll first list the benefits, then explain the broad steps, and finally, go into more depth on how to do it.

Benefits

1. Structure forces you to do the thing you know you should do anyway. Most people reading this already know that it’s important to consider the best arguments on all sides instead of just considering the weakest on the other. Many already know that you can’t just consider a counter-argument then consider yourself done. However, it’s easy to forget to do so. The structure of this method makes you much more likely to follow through with your existing rational aspirations.
2. Clarifies thinking. I’m sure everybody has experienced a discussion that’s gone all over the place, and by the end, you’re more confused than when you started. Some points get lost and forgotten while others dominate. This approach helps to organize and clarify your thinking, revealing holes and strengths in different lines of thought.
3. More likely to change your mind. As much as we aspire not to, most people, even the most competent rationalists, will often become entrenched in a position due to the nature of conversations. In steelman solitaire, there’s no other person to lose face to or to hurt your feelings. This often makes it more likely to change your mind than a lot of other methods.
4. Makes you think much more deeply than usual. A common feature of people I would describe as “deep thinkers” is that they’ve often already thought of my counter-argument, and the counter-counter-counter-etc-argument. This method will make you really dig deep into an issue.
5. Dealing with steelmen that are compelling to you. A problem with a lot of debates is that what is convincing to the other person isn’t convincing to you, even though there are actually good arguments out there. This method allows you to think of those reasons instead of getting caught up with what another person thinks should convince you.
6. You can look back at why you came to the belief you have. Like most intellectually-oriented people, I have a lot of opinions. Sometimes so many that I forget why I came to hold them in the first place (but I vaguely remember that it was a good reason, I’m sure). Writing things down can help you refer back to them later and re-evaluate.
7. Better at coming to the truth than most methods. For the above reasons, I think that this method makes you more likely to come to accurate beliefs.
   
   

The broad idea

Strawmanning means presenting the opposing view in the least charitable light – often so uncharitably that it does not resemble the view that the other side actually holds. The term of steelmanning was invented as a counter to this; it means taking the opposing view and trying to present it in its strongest form. This has sometimes been criticized because often the alternative belief proposed by a steelman also isn’t what the other people actually believe. For example, there’s a steelman argument that states that the reason organic food is good is that monopolies are generally bad and Monsanto having a monopoly on food could lead to disastrous consequences. This might indeed be a belief held by some people who are pro-organic, but a huge percentage of people are just falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy. 

While steelmanning may not be perfect for understanding people’s true reasons for believing propositions, it is very good for coming to more accurate beliefs yourself. If the reason you believe you don’t have to care about buying organic is that you believe that people only buy organic because of the naturalistic fallacy, you might be missing out on the fact that there’s a good reason for you to buy organic because you think monopolies on food are dangerous.

However – and this is where steelmanning back and forth comes in – what if buying organic doesn’t necessarily lead to breaking the monopoly? Maybe upon further investigation, Monsanto doesn’t have a monopoly. Or maybe multiple organizations have copyrighted different gene edits, so there’s no true monopoly.

The idea behind steelman solitaire is to not stop at steelmanning the opposing view. It’s to steelman the counter-counter-argument as well. As has been said by more eloquent people than myself, you can’t consider an argument and counter-argument and consider yourself a virtuous rationalist. There are very long chains of counter^x arguments, and you want to consider the steelman of each of them. Don’t pick any side in advance. Just commit to trying to find the true answer. 

This is all well and good in principle but can be challenging to keep organized. This is where Workflowy or Roam comes in. Workflowy allows you to have counter-arguments nested under arguments, counter-counter-arguments nested under counter-arguments, and so forth. That way you can zoom in and out and focus on one particular line of reasoning, realize you’ve gone so deep you’ve lost the forest for the trees, zoom out, and realize what triggered the consideration in the first place. It also allows you to quickly look at the main arguments for and against. Here’s a worked example for a question.

 Tips and tricks
​
That’s the broad-strokes explanation of the method. Below, I’ll list a few pointers that I follow, though please do experiment and tweak. This is by no means a final product.  

1. Name your arguments. Instead of just saying “we should buy organic because Monsanto is forming a monopoly and monopolies can lead to abuses of power”, call it “monopoly argument” in bold at the front of the bullet point then write the full argument in normal font. Naming arguments condenses the argument and gives you more cognitive workspace to play around with. It also allows you to see your arguments from a bird’s eye view.
2. Insult yourself sometimes. I usually (always) make fun of myself or my arguments while using this technique, just because it’s funny. Making your deep thinking more enjoyable makes you more likely to do it instead of putting it off forever, much like including a jelly bean in your vitamin regimen to incentivize you to take that giant gross pill you know you should take.
3. Mark arguments as resolved as they become resolved. If you dive deep into an argument and come to the conclusion that it’s not compelling, then mark it clearly as done. I write “rsv” at the beginning of the entry to remind me, but you can use anything that will remind you that you’re no longer concerned with that argument. Follow up with a little note at the beginning of the thread giving either a short explanation detailing why it’s ruled out, or, ideally, just the named argument that beat it.
4. Prioritize ruling out arguments. This is a good general approach to life and one we use in our research at Charity Entrepreneurship. Try to find out as soon as possible whether something isn’t going to work. Take a moment when you’re thinking of arguments to think of the angles that are most likely to destroy something quickly, then prioritize investigating those. That will allow you to get through more arguments faster, and thus, come to more correct conclusions over your lifetime.
5. Start with the trigger. Start with a section where you describe what triggered the thought. This can often help you get to the true question you’re trying to answer. A huge trick to coming to correct conclusions is asking the right questions in the first place.
6. Use in spreadsheet decision-making. If you’re using the spreadsheet decision-making system, then you can play steelman solitaire to help you fill in the cells comparing different options.
7. Use for decisions and problem-solving generally. This method can be used for claims about how the universe is, but it can also be applied to decision-making and problem-solving generally. Just start with a problem statement or decision you’re contemplating, make a list of possible solutions, then play steelman solitaire on those options.

Conclusion

In summary, steelman solitaire means steelmanning arguments back and forth repeatedly. It helps with:

• Coming to more correct beliefs
• Getting out of unproductive conversations
• Making sure you do epistemically virtuous things that you already know you should do

The method to follow is to make a claim, make a steelman against that claim, then a steelman against that claim, and on and on until you can’t anymore or are convinced one way or the other.

I recently faced a series of public attacks and it hurt a lot. 

Here’s what I did to feel better and get back on my feet. 

1. Check and see if attacks are justified. If so, problem solve and apologize. 
2. Systematically try different emotional problem-solving techniques until something works. In my case that ended up being:

• Problem-solving
• Loving-kindness practice directed towards myself
• Tapping

First I checked to see if the attacks were justified and if there was anything I could do to improve. 

It’s important to follow this step, because nobody’s perfect and if you’re doing something wrong, it’s better to acknowledge and course correct, rather than insisting that the people attacking you are just dumb and bad. Even if they say something in an unnecessarily hurtful way, don’t let that stop you from learning and improving. 

In this case, one of the cases was a justified attack, another was not. 

For the justified attack, I spent time problem-solving and issued a public apology and explanation of how I was going to do better. This got a lot of positive feedback and also made me feel a lot better. It feels awful to have gone against your values. Sincere apologies can be really healing. 

For the unjustified attack, that was a little harder. It led to real life consequences that will likely permanently affect my ability to do my work. This was harder to deal with. 

At first I tried to just take some time off, which did make me feel happier in the moment. However, when I came back to work, the problem was still there, and so I went straight back to feeling awful. Whenever I thought about work, I’d feel anxious and sad, then retreat to some distraction. 
I tried talking to my friends about it, which was nice, but didn’t fix it.

I tried reframing the issue (e.g. I’ll still have lots of impact, I should expect setbacks, advocates in the past used to suffer mob mobs, not just internet mobs, etc). I believed all of these in a certain way, but it didn’t fix the feelings of sadness and hopelessness. 

I tried pushing through it and hoping that time would just heal all wounds. 

But even if I could push through some waves of sadness, eventually one would knock me off course. 

I tried stoic practices. I compared my situation to people who had worse off situations or situations in the past that were much worse for myself. I tried dismissing public opinion. 

I tried reading a biography of an advocate who went through much worse than I did (Frederick Douglass). It was informative but did not help solve the emotions 

I tried gratitude journaling. 

I tried listening to motivational music and getting into a “shoulders back, stiffen your spine, get back in the ring” mindset.

I systematically kept trying different techniques until I found something that worked. Which is actually the general practice that everybody should do when they are feeling bad and it doesn't go away naturally.

Eventually the things that got me out of the funk were three-fold:

• Actual problem-solving. 

I came up with a partial solution to the problem. Things are still worse than if the public attack hadn’t happened, but I took some steps to make things better. 
Sometimes you’re unhappy because of actually bad things in the world. Sometimes your feelings of sadness or anxiety are pointing you towards the problem you should work on solving. 

• Loving-kindness practice directed towards myself

The specific techniques I used were:

1. Hands on heart (I find the physical gesture helps both generate the emotion and also helps you stay focused)
2. Imagining being Dumbledore and how he feels towards Harry, even when Harry is being attacked by the press and Harry’s not handling it well. Once that feeling is generated, directing it towards myself
3. Feeling a wave of sadness, then visualizing giving that feeling a loving hug

​

• Tapping

Tapping is a lesser known happiness technique that I’ve had a lot of success with. 

Here’s quick instructions on how to do it  . They say it’s about “meridians” and what not, but I just ignore that. I feel *immediate* benefits and that’s all the evidence I need.

Tips on how to do it: In my experience, positive emotions can arise within two seconds of tapping the correct spot. The effective tapping locations seem to vary between individuals. Some spots may consistently yield no response and can be omitted from your practice. 

For effective spots, it may be necessary to adjust the tapping location slightly (for example, by moving about a centimeter) until the desired effect is achieved. The optimal spot may shift subtly, and on some days, tapping might not work at all. If a spot has not produced a positive response after at least five attempts, consider discontinuing its use. 

If results are inconsistent, experiment with nearby areas but refrain from prolonged use on days when the technique is ineffective.

I did loving-kindness practice and tapping for about 30 minutes. 

I felt healing while I was doing it. Then, when I came back to the real world, I hit a small unrelated obstacle and immediately felt terrible again. 

However, something had shifted. I felt better and better throughout the day, still with waves of sadness, but the waves were diminishing in intensity and frequency. 

By the next day, I was back to normal. I did another self-loving-kindness and tapping session, just to be sure, but otherwise, I was back at it. 
​
Of course, different advice will work for different people. I most recommend the underlying strategy: systematically keep trying different methods until you find something that works.

​"What’s going on with all these CEOs who drastically change their appearance over time?"

It's nerds instrumentally converging on looks being useful

They start off typical nerds, with no intrinsic drive to look good. So they start off at the bottom of their potential attractiveness

As they understand the world more, they realize they can achieve more of any goal they want if they look good, so they actually start putting in effort, which leads to massive improvements

They eventually stabilize at the most attractive they can look given base genetics

It's just especially noticeable because they start off super low cause they don't care

Most people, like politicians or celebrities, cared before they had fame and money, so they can't improve as much. There's diminishing returns to trying to improve your looks.

Speaking as a nerd who went through this exact pattern.

Nerds often fall into the trap of thinking that caring about your looks is somehow unethical.

“People shouldn’t care about what I look like! They should just like me for me and evaluate my ideas purely on their merit”

I used to fall into this camp, but now believe this is misguided. Here’s what changed my mind:

1. It's not actually irrational to care about people's appearance. Fashion contains a lot of relevant information
2. It's human nature to care about people's appearance, and you can't change human nature
3. Even if the first two things weren't true, you have to prioritize the battles you decide to fight

​
1)  𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞’𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞.

What somebody looks like, especially their fashion, contains a 𝘭𝘰𝘵 of information about them.

I remember once a rationalist event organizer was proposing that people have special bracelets where different beads signalled different things (e.g. romantic availability, open to talking vs not, etc) and I laughed so hard.

That’s what clothing already does! It’s just that some people are blind to its messaging, either on purpose or because of a lack of skill.

Imagine somebody wearing full hippie garb, including multi-color dreadlocks, an amethyst necklace, and a tattoo of chakras down his arm. Imagine he tells you that he read a study saying that there’s a dangerous chemical in the water.

Imagine you hear the same thing, but from a man in traditional academic garb of comfortable shoes, slacks, button-up top, sweater, with short undyed hair.

It is perfectly reasonable to put more credence on the academic-looking man over the hippie-looking man when it comes to studies about chemicals in the water.

Of course, if they share the study and you have the time and inclination to look into it, you should evaluate the study based on its own merits, not the merits of who shared it with you.

But also, the probability that you 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 look into it more is also dependent on the person who shared it with you. I have a bunch of hippie friends who I love dearly but whose epistemics are so broken that it would be very hard for them to get me to look into any of their theories because I think it’s just too likely to be wrong and a waste of my time.

This only applies to people you have so far had little exposure to. As you get to know them, you should let that information dominate over fashion. For example, I have some hippie friends with colorful hair who look deeply uncredible to strangers but I happen to know their epistemology is actually pretty good.

However, if you think of your friends and followers as following a funnel, where first they have to meet you or see you, decide whether it’s worth getting to know you and listening to your ideas, etc, then you need to care about that top of the funnel. If people just see you in a youtube thumbnail or see your outward appearance at a party and are deciding whether to approach or not, your looks communicate a lot about whether it will be worth their time.

And if you have a neckbeard and a fedora or have strangely colored hair and a visible tattoo, people will (often correctly), infer a lot about you.

(Interestingly, attractiveness and persuasiveness often come apart here. For example, having multi-colored hair might attract the sort of romantic partner who will like your personality, but is anti-persuasive to the majority of humanity. What I recommend in those sorts of situations is trying to find something that achieves both goals, such as replacing multi-colored hair with a varied wardrobe. Wear eccentric, vibrant clothes at parties, then wear a regular button up on a podcast)

Now, this doesn’t mean you should just dress as attractively as possible. It all depends on your goals. 

Most people have the goal to attract or keep a mate, so attractiveness is a common goal. But there are others. There’s credibility. There’s in-group signalling. There’s comfort and practicality. There’s self-expression.

I remember when I first started working on my appearance, and I found a look that was very attractive but didn’t feel like “me” at all, and it was really uncomfortable. I don’t recommend that. I eventually iterated into something that felt like it authentically represented myself to the outside world while also achieving my other goals, such as attractiveness, comfort, low effort, and credibility.

All this is to say that fashion, because it’s a choice, conveys a lot of information. You can choose it more deliberately and get better outcomes.

𝟐) 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞’𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞

Caring about appearance is to 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 degree cultural. I think our culture is way less shallow than it was in Victorian times. 

However, we’ve been receiving admonitions from society for ages to care less about appearance and I think we’re as far as we’re going to get.

Which makes sense, because fashion does actually provide information. But also, we’re largely visual creatures and have evolved to pay attention to how people attire themselves. We can’t turn it off, even if we wanted to.

Like, I think that the vast majority of humans could not take Borat in his banana hammock seriously, no matter how good his points were. If he approached you in a conference to tell you some interesting stats about your favorite field, you’d find it nearly impossible to buy it, no matter how good his ideas were otherwise.

𝟑) 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞.

Fighting for people to care less about appearances is not a very high impact cause area and fighting it severely hurts your ability to fight for more important and tractable problems.

Pick your battles. You can spend the rest of your life having a constant drain on your impact and ability to achieve your goals for probably no benefit, or you can focus on things that matter more.

Fashion doesn’t have to take a long time. I limit myself to 5 minutes or less a day, plus once a year or two shopping trip for clothes. Just 80/20 it. Clothing causes “passive beauty” (like passive income, but for looks), where once you buy them, you look better for years afterwards while you wear them.

Disclaimer: this will only work for a subset of you. Law of Equal and Opposite Advice and all that. It might only even work for me. This definitely feels like a weird psychological trick that might only work with my brain. 

I spent my twenties being absolutely devastated by uncertainty. I saw the suffering in the world and I desperately wanted to help, but the more I learned and the more I tried, the wider my confidence intervals got. 

Maybe I could promote bednets. But what about the meat eater problem?

Maybe I could promote veganism? But what about the small animal replacement problem? 

Even giving out free hugs (the most clearly benign thing I could think of) might cause unexpected trauma for some unknown percentage of the population such that it negates all the positives.

It eventually reached a crescendo in 2020 where I sunk into absolute epistemic hopelessness. An RCT had just been published about the intervention I was doing that didn't even show that the intervention didn't work. It was just ambiguous. If at least it had been obviously zero impact, I could have moved on. But it was ambiguous for goodness sake! 

I actually briefly gave up on altruism. 

I was going to go be a hippie in the woods and make art and do drugs. After all, if I couldn't know if what I was doing was helping or even hurting, I might as well be happy myself. 

But then…. I saw something in the news about the suffering in the world. And I wanted to help. 

No, a part of me said. You can't help, remember? Nothing works. Or you can never tell if it's working. 

And then another thing showed up in my social media feed…. 

But no! It wasn’t worth trying because the universe was too complex and I was but a monkey in shoes. 

But still. . . . another part of me couldn’t look away. It said “Look at the suffering. You can’t possibly see that and not at least try.” 

I realized in that moment that I couldn’t actually be happy if I wasn’t at least trying. 

This led to a large breakthrough in how I felt. Before, there was always the possibility of stopping and just having fun. So I was comparing all of the hard work and sacrifice I was doing to this ideal alternative life. 

When I realized that even if I had basically no hope, I’d still keep trying, this liberated me. There was no alternative life where I wasn’t trying. 

It felt like the equivalent of burning the ships. No way to go but forward. No temptation of retreat. 

Many things aren’t bad in and of themselves, but bad compared to something else. If you remove the comparison, then they’re good again. 

But it wasn’t over yet. I was still deeply uncertain. I went to Rwanda to try to actually get as close to ground truth as possible, while also reading a ton about meta-ethics, to get at the highest level stuff, then covid hit. 

While I was stuck in lockdown, I realized that I should take the simulation hypothesis seriously. 

You’d think this would intensify my epistemic nihilism, but it didn’t.

It turned me into an epistemic absurdist.

Which is basically the same thing, but happy. 

Even if this is base reality, I’m profoundly uncertain about whether bednets are even net positive. 

Now you add that this might all be a simulation?!? 

For real?! 

(Pun was unintentional but appreciated, so I’m keeping it) 

This was a blessing in disguise though, because suddenly it went from:

1. “If you make choice A a baby will die and it’s on your hands” to 
2. “If you make choice A, you’ll never really know if it helps or hurts due to deep massive uncertainty, but hey, might as well try”

The more certain you feel, the more you feel you can control things, and that leads to feeling more stressed out. 

As you become more uncertain, it can feel more and more stressful, because there’s an outcome you care about and you’re not sure how to get there. 

But if you have only very minimal control, you can either freak out more, because it’s out of your control, or you can relax, because it’s out of your control. 

So I became like the Taoist proverb: "A drunkard falls out of a carriage but doesn't get hurt because they go limp."

If somebody walked by a drowning child that would be trivially easy to save, I’d think they were a monster. 

If somebody walks by a deeply complex situation where getting involved may or may not help and may even accidentally make it worse, but then tries to help anyway, I think they’re a good person and if it doesn’t work out, well, hey, at least they tried. 

I relaxed into the uncertainty. The uncertainty means I don’t have to be so hard on myself, because it’s just too complicated to really know one way or the other. 

Nowadays I work in AI safety, and whenever I start feeling anxious about timelines and p(doom), the most reliable way for me to feel better is to remind myself about the deep uncertainty around everything. 

“Remember, this might all be a simulation. And even if it isn’t, it’s really hard to figure out what’s net positive, so just do something that seems likely to be good, and make sure it’s something you at least enjoy, so no matter what, you’ll at least have had a good life”

How can other people apply this?

I think this won’t work for most people, but you can try this on and see if it works for you:

1. Imagine the worst, and see if you’d still try to help. Imagine you’re maximally uncertain. If you’d still try to help in this situation, you can feel better, knowing that no matter what, you’ll still care and do your best. 
2. Relax into the uncertainty. Recognize that you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, because there aren't actually just drowning babies needing a simple lift. 

Anyways, while I’m sure this won’t work for most people, hopefully some people who are currently struggling in epistemic nihilism might be able to come out the other side and enjoy epistemic absurdism like me. 

But in the end, who knows? 

If you have a mystery illness, I recommend keeping a spreadsheet that has a list of hypotheses as the rows, then columns for:

• Evidence for
• Evidence against
• Next steps (e.g. get blood test, try eating less X, etc)
• State (e.g. to test, testing, tested and ruled out, etc)

It really helps you stay organized about what you are testing and why, and whether you can move on from a certain hypothesis or not.

Writing is like exercise. It’s just good on so many levels. 

• Writing can be high impact
• Writing can be inspiring
• Writing can help you learn and grow
• Writing can help your career
• Writing can be meaningful and deeply satisfying
• Writing can get you into flow
• And also, just like with exercise, almost nobody writes enough

Whenever I get back into the habit of writing, I always think I should write more. It’s one of my favorite things. 

Yet, much like exercise is for most people, I tend to have little flares of interest, where I get really into it for a week or two, then lose steam, and it just becomes a dormant blog again. You might have had a similar experience, and maybe even have a cobwebby blog or two out there. Perhaps you have some really cool half-finished google docs that you never quite got around to finishing and publishing. 
It’s a funny thing though, about writing being like exercise. Because do you remember what exercise used to be called when you were a child? 

Play.

And I remembered on a recent vacation I took, where I had the slack to remember, that writing is play. I fell back in love with writing then, typing away furiously on the beach. 

Not only was it intrinsically fun, but I also loved that it felt like I was making a difference, writing about important topics. That my recommendations were helping people, whether it be making them happier or making them higher impact, or sometimes, if I was lucky, both.

To help myself (and perhaps you) remember this and all the other reasons to write, I’ve decided to write about all the reasons I have to write. 

Reading the list will inspire me and hopefully others. Publishing it will publicly commit me to writing, which will make it more likely. Even better, it could potentially re-inspire some people, perhaps you, to start writing for the forums again. Or maybe even it’ll get you excited to try your hand at writing publicly, even though you’ve never done it before.

Epistemic status: motivational

Epistemic status: motivational. An explanation of my personal experience that doesn’t generalize to all people. This isn’t meant to be a nuanced look into the pros and cons of writing. 

It’s meant to inspire a subset of the population (and myself!) to write more. None of this applies to all writing or all people. It’s meant more as a manifesto rather than a research piece. 

Of course, this is the EA Forum, so feel free to debate the merits and demerits of writing in the comments.

Now, with all that hedging out of the way, here’s a giant list of reasons why you, the community, and myself should write. 

​Some reasons to write

The reasons to write fall broadly into three categories: enjoyment, capacity building, and impact. 
​
Enjoyment and other personal benefits

Writing can be personally gratifying in so many ways. 

1. Moments of inspiration. Sometimes you’re really excited about what you’re writing, and the words just pour out of you. It can be a really peak experience.
2. Art. If you have a part of you that craves the artist’s life, you can have some of that through writing, without having to quit your day job. It can sometimes feel like being an EA is antithetical to being artistic, but writing is a great way to combine a seeking of impact with a seeking of beauty.
3. The world is your material. It changes the way you interact with the world. You’re always on the lookout for little snippets of an idea really well put. You have great conversations and that’s grist for the mill. It’s like being on a lifelong treasure hunt, with little hits of dopamine splashed throughout the day.
4. Sweet sweet internet points. In George Orwell’s “Why I Write” essay, the first reason he lists is egoism. And he wrote that before the internet! You can only imagine how much George would have loved Twitter and the EA Forum.
5. Romantic. There’s something romantic about writing, be it in a cafe or in a park, or in your favorite writing nook. To be a writer feels like being an explorer or a gentleman scholar - a role straight out of a novel.
6. Coming up with little flourishes is fun. There’s a pleasure in finding exactly the right turn of phrase that makes the idea both beautiful and make sense.
7. Feelings of pride. Sometimes you write an article you’re really satisfied with, which feels outstanding.
8. Identity of a writer. Having the identity of a writer has a certain romantic appeal. You kind of feel like a writer in Paris. To be a writer for a cause is even better, like Tolstoy or the journalist in Blood Diamond.
9. Short self-contained projects. So often what you’re working on takes ages till it’s done, or it’s never really done. Endless to-do lists are the norm. But with writing posts, there’s a very clear start and finish, and it can take as little as a morning to finish. There is something deeply rewarding about this, where the finish line is always so close.
10. Writing in beautiful places. There's something meditative about taking your computer somewhere and working in a beautiful place, whether at a perfectly decorated cafe or out in nature.
11. Seeing people apply your ideas. It's so gratifying to see somebody actually implement one of your ideas.
12. More people agree with you. This is high impact if you happen to be less wrong than the average person you’re changing the mind of, but I’m listing it under personal enjoyment as a separate point from the impact. It’s nice when people agree with your (obviously correct and superior) views.
13. Getting thank you comments and DMs. I mean, this is the EA Forum, so there’s always going to be criticism and debate, but there are also often some really motivating comments saying thank you or complimenting your work. 

Capacity building

1. Learning and other ways it helps you come to the truth:
   1. Remembering, via two mechanisms:
      1. Like taking notes. Writing things down helps you remember them, like taking notes in class. The act of writing them down helps solidify them in your brain.
      2. Reference. You can use your old writing for reference.   
   2. Understanding. One of the best ways to truly understand something is to teach it to somebody else, and that’s exactly what the best writing is: teaching.
   3. Uncovering blind spots. Trying to write about a topic is one of the best ways to reveal the areas you don’t actually understand.
   4. Thinking more clearly. Putting your thoughts on paper forces you to make things explicit. I do some of my best thinking in a google document.
   5. New ideas. Often writing leads to you having new ideas. Steelman solitaire is also really good for that.
   6. Finding relevant information. A common response to posts will be for people to share relevant articles, which will help you have a better view of things.
   7. Getting feedback from the world. What’s the best way to get people to give you feedback? Post something wrong on the internet and wait for the comments. (Tip: see the comment section as the "debate section". This re-frame can turn you from feeling defensive to feeling interested.)
2. ↑Reputation. People will know about you and like some of your work. This leads to all sorts of things, like increasing your ability to:
   1. Get a job. If you have an online presence, people are more likely to hire you. You get to showcase your talents and knowledge at scale.
   2. Fundraise. The key to fundraising is credibly signaling that you can be trusted to turn money into impact. Making good content can be a hard-to-fake indicator of competence and show that you have aligned values and epistemics.
   3. Hire people. I don’t know about you, but I'm much more likely to want to work for someone whose work I've already read and enjoyed.
   4. Get people’s time to discuss an idea. If you’d like to discuss an idea with somebody in the community, they’re far more likely to say yes if they already “know” you a little from your writing. Public writing is like scaled-up, passive networking. 

Impact and other benefits to the world

​Improve the conclusions of the community. This then improves their actions, leading to impact.

1. Improve conclusions at scale. Most of the time if you have a good idea, you only maybe persuade a few of your friends. If you write, dozens or hundreds of people will read it.
2. Motivate action. Very often reading a well-reasoned blog post is what spurs people to action. Write about potentially high-impact activities and it might mobilize a lot of people.
3. Improve your own conclusions→ impact (see Learning section)
4. Help others directly. A lot of writing helps the reader directly. For example, this post on self-love contributed to my overcoming impostor syndrome and increased my self-acceptance a ton. 

I could go on, but after reading all of these reasons, I’m excited to finish an essay I’ve had in a Google Doc draft for forever.
I hope this also inspires you to dust off an old blog or start a new one. To experience writing as dancing. Where it counts as exercise and is good for you, but you don’t even care about that, because it’s just so damn fun. 

It's like this expression, but applied to food: don't marry rich.

Hangout with rich people, then marry for love.

So often when people try to lose weight or be healthier, they try to eat only The Healthiest Thing, regardless of flavor.

The thing is - "diets" only work if you can be on them for the rest of your life.

Can you eat only things you don't really like for the rest of your life?

I know I certainly can't!

The fortunate thing though is that there are a bajillion healthy foods that you actually like.

Explore. Find those. Don't stop till you have a wide variety of meals and snacks that are healthy and delicious to you.

If they're healthy but not delicious, screw 'em. If they're delicious but not healthy, save them for special occasions.

If they're healthy and delicious to you? Perfection.

 Networking alternative for introverts : just write.

Imagine how many people know and respect you from seeing you give a talk at a conference.

Compare that to the numbers of views, influence, and bonding you get from the average post, either on social media or the fora.

Think about how much you know and like various writers, despite never having met them.

You could be that writer.

There are two types of tired.

When you need
1) Rest
2) Energizing 

Sometimes the way to feel better is to veg and sleep.

Sometimes the way to feel better is to move your body or do something you feel passionate about. 

If you're tired due to lack of energizing activities, rest will not help you. 

You'll veg all weekend then you'll come back to work and be just as exhausted as before. It won't help if you go on a long vacation 

Your fatigue is not from overwork. 

You're fatigue is from not doing enough energizing stuff. 

For everybody that includes moving your body 

For the rest of it, it depends on the person. 

Some people find talking to people energizing, some people find solitude energizing. 

Some people find certain tasks energizing, others find them draining. 

The point is to figure out which of those apply to you, then do more of those things. Either at work or at home.