Why the EA Forum/LessWrong are sub-optimal if you’re trying to maximize your reach and mental health

Why the EA Forum/LessWrong are sub-optimal if you’re trying to maximize your reach and mental health

The reason is that you can you post on various Slacks, Discords, Facebook groups, Twitter, and sub-reddits instead and you:

1) Get way more quality-controlled engagement
2) Get way more shots on goal
3) With waaaay less effort and
4) Way less mental health effects

1) You get more readership elsewhere

The EA Forum shows you their analytics, and my median post gets roughly 1,000 views. 

My most viewed post on the EA Forum was around 20k views.

On Twitter, my median views is roughly 2,000 views. 

My most viewed post on Twitter (only counting my substantive and EA relevant posts) was 283k views.

Lest you are concerned about your current follower count, there are all the sub-reddits and others platforms that give you a default large audience, just like the EA Forum. 

Posting on a sub-reddit with a large following is like being able to write for a newspaper with a large readership. 

(Check out the list here)

What inspired this Tweet was that I just posted on the EA and Control Problem sub-reddits and within 4 hours, I had over 1.4k views and counting and this is totally ordinary. 

For reference, I posted the same thing on Twitter and have about the same viewership rate.

Which means that you could post on these two subreddits and get similar views to having a Twitter account of my size.

And that’s just two sub-reddits. You can post it on all the different Facebook groups, Slacks, Discords, etc. Once you’ve written it for one platform, it tends to work for all of them.

Just go and copy-paste it to all the different platforms for 7 minutes, then kick back and enjoy the glorious impact and internet points.

2) One big account can destroy your post if you just post on the fora

If you post of the fora (EA Forum + LessWrong) one large account can hard downvote you and then ruin your chances of getting seen by others.

If your post is at zero karma or below, most people won’t give it a chance, and then you’re dead in the water. You’ve spent ages creating your baby, and one person gave it a thumbs down, and now nobody will read it.

If you post on a bunch of platforms, each place has a chance of getting a lot of readership. Also, most places don’t have downvotes, and none have weighted downvotes, so you can’t be destroyed by just one person who doesn’t like your idea.

3) Posting on the fora is a pain in the ass

The fora have way higher standards, and so they take way longer to write.

It takes me roughly 30 minutes on average to write a sizeable tweet and it takes me days of blood, sweat and editing to write an article for the EA Forum/LessWrong.

To the point where I just don’t write most of the articles I’d like to share because I know it’ll be ripped to shreds otherwise.

4) Posting on the fora is worse for your mental health than Twitter

I often joke that Twitter is better for my mental health than the fora, and it’s funny because it’s true.

No matter how much effort you put into an article, if you post it on the fora, people will nitpick it to death.

EAs and rationalists are much nicer on Twitter and Facebook than they are on the fora. 

I don’t know why, but it’s true. 

Maybe it’s because there isn’t a downvote button? 

Maybe it’s because you can block harrassers on regular social media which provides some accountability?

I don’t know why, but it’s definitely true.

Now, Twitter and Reddit definitely have some unhinged hecklers that the fora don’t have. Like, nobody on the fora has ever told me to go die or called me a “fucking idiot”, etc.

But for me at least, I don’t mind that sort of commentary. I can just block them if they’re sufficiently unhinged, and regardless, they’re just anonymous angry idiots online, and they have no ability to hurt me.

Criticism from EAs is worse because it’s a small community and they can and will hurt your career and ability to do good by spreading gossip if they don’t like you.

Some EAs tend towards the bureaucrat’s curse and if they see one criticism, they think everything should stop until that criticism is addressed otherwise it’s “the unilateralist’s curse” (it’s not the unilateralist’s curse unless the majority of informed people think it’s bad, but that’s for another article).

It’s the difference between a homeless person yelling that you’re part of a shadowy cabal destroying the planet and a fellow community member saying your project is likely net negative.

One might be a worse accusation, but it has no effect on your life and is easy to ignore. The other can have really big effects on your life, regardless of its validity.

Also, this just doesn’t happen at all if you’re liberal with blocking people. Which I don’t usually do, because the hecklers actually boost you in the algorithm, but you can just block them if they bother you.

Hence, posting on the fora just wrecks your mental health in a way that posting on social media doesn’t.

When should you post on the fora?

Now, there can be reasons to post on the fora anyways, and plenty of reasons to read the fora.

As I said, the standards of quality are higher on the fora. So if you want to read things with a higher epistemic quality, it’s a good source.

 It’s also much better at storing and sourcing evergreen content, so it’s good for getting up to speed on a topic.

This means that if you’re trying to boost your credibility, it could be better to post on the fora. You will be seen as a more serious candidate for many jobs or grant applications if you have some good posts there.

But honestly, that’s also true if people have seen you many times on all the different platforms.

I dunno. I don’t think the benefits are worth the costs for most people. 

I think this could change if the fora change their systems and culture.

But in the meantime, for most people, it’s more benefits for less costs to post everywhere else.

You could have way more impact and way more fun for way less effort elsewhere.