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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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      Writing as an activity lacks a notion of difficulty. Compare with math, where mathematicians have good consensus on some theorems being easy to prove and others being hard to prove or unproven. With writing non-fiction, we assume topics differ only in time needed, not difficulty

      1 reply 6 retweets 41 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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      We don't often say things like "this is a hard idea to write." Instead we attribute difficulty to the writer ("I'm not good enough") or level of preparation ("I'll need a lot more time to research this") or time ("this will take months"). No. Intrinsic difficulty is distinct.

      2 replies 2 retweets 16 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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      Some ideas would be hard even if you were 10x better, had all the prep done, and all the time in the world. They're just... hard. And would be hard even for the "best" suited writer. And some ideas are so hard, no single human can write them. And some defeat collectives too

      12:49 PM - 3 May 2019
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      • Jakub J. Annabel Church Gareth Holman simpolism Francesca Pallopides Billy Smith Eric Anderson Meghan Kane ashtrix29 A~
      1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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          I've gotten better at estimating difficulty of a topic, separately from my own competence/preparation/time. But it's still not easy. A nail is vastly easier to make than a computer chip of the same weight. Some pairs of 1000 word ideas have same difficulty gap as a nail-to-chip.

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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          Also topic difficult is often confused with wrongness of underlying thesis. To use an earlier example, it is difficult to write about "The Problem With Whig Polyannish Economic Optimism" but that's not proof that there are no problems or that the problems are imaginary.

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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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          Relationship to cryptography. It's easier to multiply two large primes than to factor the product into constituent primes. Many contentious topics have this kind of difficulty asymmetry. A thesis being harder than the antithesis, where both are "great truths" a la Niels Bohr.

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 3 May 2019
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          Of course, if the thesis and antithesis differ in correctness as well as difficulty, you're in even murkier territory. If the two asymmetries align you get overwhelming ease in one direction. The tough case is the H. L. Mencken case: the false argument is easier to make.

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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