EA - Using the “executive summary” style: writing that respects your reader’s time by deep

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Using the “executive summary” style: writing that respects your reader’s time, published by deep on July 22, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary EA researchers would benefit from adopting communication norms from the policy world, which emphasize clarity and ease of reading. As an AI governance researcher, I’ve gotten a lot of value from using these practices – they help me clarify my ideas and get useful feedback. I appreciate it when colleagues use these practices, too. By contrast, it can be difficult to read and parse some important EA documents, which are written as long blog posts without accessible summaries. Three best practices to adopt: 1. Put your key points up front. 2. Use bullet points or numbered lists. 3. Use headings and bolding to make your document easy to skim. I suggest practicing by writing a summary of an important but not-maximally-accessible piece of work. For an example, see my summary of Gwern’s Scaling Hypothesis post at the end of this post. I recommend Holden Karnofsky’s blog posts, particularly this summary of his blog post series on the “most important century”, as good examples of accessible writing on complex topics. Policy-sphere writing optimizes for clarity and ease of reading – two valuable attributes that EA docs sometimes lack EA researchers would benefit from adopting communication norms from the policy world, which emphasize clarity and ease of reading. Policy briefs are written for people with little time who need to make decisions quickly, and I find them easy and pleasant to read because they respect my time as a reader. Longtermists I know who've been exposed to these norms generally find them valuable, and want them to be more widespread within EA. In my experience, adopting these norms takes some effort, but is extremely worthwhile on a personal level. It forces me to clarify my thinking – which is actually a really big deal! When I started out as a researcher, I tried to write things in academic-style prose, and I think this made it harder for me to think things through properly. Writing docs this way means it’s easier to get feedback. And the feedback I get is probably more useful–for example, more focused on core ideas, since it’s clearer what those are. It makes my docs more useful as a reference. At least, that’s true for me, and I’m guessing it’s true for my readers as well. When I'm coming back to my doc a month later and trying to remember what I think about topic X, having used executive summary style makes it much easier to get back up to speed. It’s actually fun to check back in on my rough ideas and works in progress, instead of stressful. I think following these norms is also very good for your readers, both in and out of the EA sphere. In the EA sphere: Following these norms saves readers valuable time. Although our community tends to select for people who enjoy reading long, dry online texts, not all EAs are like this, and even the ones who are have high opportunity costs. Writing a piece with a good summary and skimmable structure makes it much easier for your readers to make informed decisions about how much to read, what sections to prioritize, and in what depth. Whatever they do end up reading, it’ll be much easier for them to quickly extract useful insights. Outside of the EA sphere: Following these norms could also make external-facing EA writeups more accessible to policymakers, executives, and other senior decision-makers who may lack context on our ideas and the time to get up to speed on them. (Frankly, it also helps policy reports look more legitimate, although I’m guessing most EAs interested in influencing policy have some professional experience and so are already familiar with this style.) Concrete recommendations Three core tips A useful starting point is to adopt the three follo...