Robin Hanson has doubts about the long-term value of blogging — especially his own:
My main doubt is whether this will accumulate . . . We get over a thousand readers a day here, and those readers must be influenced somehow. But do those influences add up to a long term net effect?
Consider that before the farming revolution humanity’s knowledge accumulated very slowly. Each person learned a great deal over the course of his lifetime, both by discovering new insights for himself and by listening to others. Nevertheless, the distribution of knowledge in the population hardly changed; each new generation had to rediscover and relearn the same insights all over again.
Before farming, I believe new insights were passed down in three ways. 1. Stories. Stories are to teaching as good food is to nourishment. Whenever I tell a story, my students pay close attention. 2. Apprenticeships. 3. Specialists talking to each other — a manifestation of the Fan Club Instinct. Blogging is a new version of Method 3. When old specialists talked to young specialists, knowledge was passed down. Robin is young, but his posts are influencing even younger persons.
I think blogging is a good use of my time for several reasons. 1. Advertising. I hope blogging will draw attention to my papers and book and future work. Brian Wansink nicely made this point (scientists should advertise). 2. Quasi-reinforcement. Blogging divides a big task (writing a book or paper) into much smaller tasks (writing posts). 3. Data collection. Because of my omega-3 posts, two other people gathered data useful (very) to me. Tim Lundeen’s data led me to study new tasks. Tyler Cowen’s experience with flaxseed oil is enormously important to my omega-3 research.
But I have to agree with Robin that blogging sometimes seems too seductive — that I should write fewer posts like this one and more that fit into the book and papers I want to write. I keep thinking of something Philip Weiss said in his blog: For men, the most enjoyable form of expression is the Op-Ed piece.
Well, few 18-year-olds wonder how to have a lasting intellectual effect. I think Robin is young compared to people who have such effects.
I hope both you and Robin will continue to blog — I would miss both of these!
Seth, have you used blogging as a test for the effects of Omega 3 in writing?. It could be another reason to blog
Have you noticed if taking Omega 3 oils affect writing? e.g. fluency, typing speed, spelling mistakes, calmness?. All these could be messured.
Thanks