
I've decided to move on to Distill - apsec112
http://colah.github.io/posts/2017-03-Distill/
======
tedmiston
> As colah.github.io has grown in prominence… Well, it’s been very rewarding,
> but it’s also been a bit uncomfortable.

> For one thing, it’s created very high standards for my writing. Most of my
> articles took 50-200 hours to write. I feel like I needed to live up to that
> quality with every post, but that means I can’t put out thoughts without
> investing a huge amount of energy.

I've done a bit of blogging and this echoes my experience as well. One
successful posts precedes another, then you start to feel like you can't put
out off-the-cuff type posts. It's tough to follow up a rockstar post with an
intermezzo. So you invest more and more energy into each topic and post to
ensure it'll be successful in whatever metric, and that mostly works, but then
you publish few posts in very specific niches.

If anyone has advice for effectively blowing one's standards out of the water
and publishing more smaller general pieces, I'd love to hear that. From this
perspective, I admire how Fred Wilson blogs.

Edit: fixed typo

~~~
Swizec
I struggle with this a lot and here is a truth: nobody cares.

Your blog is not a destination, each post is its own page. Those that are good
are going to float and give you recognition and get a lot of traffic and build
your brand and your audience.

The others nobody will see and they affect nothing.

The more you publish the more hits you'll have the better you'll get. Here is
a fable:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class
into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be
graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right
solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he
would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group:
fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being
graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a
perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact
emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being
graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily
churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality"
group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to
show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
I don't know why you are grayed out. I found your post right on the money.
Perfectionism is crippling and it seems to be increasing in our society. So
people do nothing, which is infinitely worse!

I'm reminded of a little cartoon Fellini scribbled that I saw in a book about
him once, and I have always found it funny and helpful. I'm paraphrasing from
memory, but it was a funny little guy and he was saying "I can always do a
poo" or something to that effect. One of the most creative minds that has ever
existed seemed to be saying that no matter what, you can always at least do a
poo.

------
jasim
"I began to worry that, by focusing on exposition, I was failing to do the
best work I could. Often, my work felt illegitimate in some way"

This could be worthy of discussion and how the author has responded to it is
commendable.

~~~
colah3
Thank you.

Talking to others in the space, I think a number of people share my
experience, and often stopped doing this kind of work. While there's extremely
positive feedback from some people, it's kind of "you have a cool hobby" and
it's kind of iffy how much it helps professionally.

In some cases, I know people who have had well-intentioned senior researchers,
or their advisor, encourage them to switch to focusing on traditional papers.
In a smaller number of cases, I know people have received explicitly negative
feedback. Sort of, "those who can, do research; those who can not, explain
research."

My career has worked out really well, but it's unclear how much of that is
luck. I think we can support people better.

~~~
joshuamorton
I think it is worth noting for everyone that this really is a form of impostor
syndrome, and people should take note that even someone who is very highly
regarded is susceptible to that kind of thing.

For what its worth, having dabbled in some visualizations of concepts, its
really difficult, and I didn't find that the available tools were well suited
for mathematical visualization. Its really unfortunate that to be able to
present something intuitively, there's a very high technical skill floor as
well as a relatively high artistic floor.

~~~
reachtarunhere
You are spot on about the impostor syndrome. Colah's confession about being
worried bring me some sort of relief given I hold him in really high regard. I
am starting out in this area (still an undergrad) and feel really scared at
times about what I am doing and at times feel I land up into good
internships/projects just by sheer luck. When someone like him who is
respected across the community can have these doubts I feel it is completely
OK for mere mortals like me have the same issues.

On similar lines, the fact that each of his posts takes 50-200 hours of work
is another reality check. I always thought he was writing these on the side in
2-3 hours. This made me believe I could not with years of practice produce
such great work. I am still not sure if I would be able to but at least I can
now set realistic expectations for myself. Also, knowing it took so much work
on his end has made me respect him even more.

------
mathgenius
This needs to happen in all the fields of science. Academia rewards
"complicated and tricky", not anything that makes it look easy. This is a
serious problem! The cult of science. Not that I should pick out science in
particular, it seems that humanity in general wants to make corrupt little
circles of influence out of all its endeavors.

PS. Yay Colah, love your stuff! It makes me happy that people like you see the
value in this work.

------
russdpale
I would argue that the dissemination of complex information to the masses is
of the utmost importance. How can humans make decisions if they don't
understand what they are deciding about.

His contribution is extremely important in advancing these fields. We need
people to do this outside of academia if the populous is going to be truly
informed about such important matters.

Bill Nye and Neil Tyson may be cheesy, but its hard to argue that they aren't
important in getting millions of kids into science at a young age, and helping
people of all ages understand the science around them.

~~~
sdflkd
Neil Tyson is beyond cheesy. He's a pendant and gives the wrong idea of what
acting intelligent is to youth. [1] It's a sign of immaturity and a desire to
appear profound.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/704330815321210884?lang...](https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/704330815321210884?lang=en)

~~~
jamescostian
It's extremely hard to take this comment seriously when everything you fault
Tyson for could easily be launched right back at you.

You call Tyson "a pedant" because he tweeted saying "Leap Day" was a bad word
choice. But you are also saying the post you replied to shouldn't have the
word "cheesy" so doesn't that make you a pedant as well?

Sure, your point is not simply that the word "cheesy" is bad - you're going a
bit more in-depth and trying to make a bigger point (specifically that Tyson
is harmful). But Tyson is not simply trying to feel smart by saying he doesn't
like the name "Leap Day" \- he's also trying to make a bigger point
(specifically, he's teaching/reminding us that our concept of a year is based
on our planets orbit, not an arbitrary number).

Similarly, you comment that Tyson "gives the wrong idea of what acting
intelligent is" but did you notice that you said "intelligent" instead of
"intelligently" despite the latter being correct? Aren't you giving the wrong
idea of what acting intelligently is to the youth by making gramatical errors
that the fragile youth may mimic?

Looking at someone under a microscope, as I have just done right back at you,
is not the best way to judge them. Your typographical error will not hurt "the
youth" just like Tyson starting a tweet off in a clickbait style with "The
Leap Day is misnamed" won't hurt us either.

~~~
aaachilless
I don't know if I agree or disagree with the comment you're responding to, but
I'm pretty sure you almost entirely missed its point.

Tyson was called a "pendant" not a "pedant." A "pendant" as in "symbolic
token."

Also, I think the nit pick about the use of "intelligent" is incorrect. You
can "act intelligent" as in "act like someone who is intelligent" and you can
"act intelligently" as in "take actions that are intelligent." The original
post's use of "intelligent" works with his use of "pendant."

~~~
whack
I'm pretty sure sdf meant to say "pedant". It would be extremely weird if sdf
was actually trying to call Tyson a "symbolic token" (minority?) by referring
to him as a "pendant".

~~~
aaachilless
> "symbolic token" (minority?)

"Symbolic token" isn't at all interchangeable with "minority" in this context,
so I'm not totally sure what you mean.

Cheesiness is an affectation. If someone's "cheesy" they lack originality or
individuality. They use canned, inauthentic phraseology in an attempt to
appear a certain way. So a "cheesy scientist" would be someone attempting to
appear very "sciencey" without substance. This is the sense in which a "cheesy
scientist" could be considered a "symbolic token" or, loosely, a "pendant"
representing the category "scientist."

I agree "pendant" is a bit of an odd choice, but in the sense I just described
it's not ridiculous.

Also, I wouldn't make this argument about Neil Tyson, this is just how my
brain put together sdf's argument.

------
dimatura
As a grad student in the field, I 100% agree with the idea of research debt.
Arxiv is great, but it has only exacerbated the problem. There's far too many
papers adding some small fluorish on an already complex architecture in order
to push an accuracy score a couple of percentage points higher, and not that
many with insightful examination of some more basic question, even if it's
considered a detail.

~~~
unixhero
That is the point of traditional academic publishing. So I don't believe it's
comparable to blogging platform.

------
dave_sullivan
Congrats on Distill Chris, sounds awesome.

> I also have unusual experiences, like dropping out of university to support
> an accused terrorist, that I might like to write about. But it feels kind of
> like an abuse to use the attention the deep learning community has given me
> as a platform for these other topics.

You've got the attention of the deep learning community because you write
about interesting stuff; I hope you write more about your non-DL experiences
and I think a lot of people (both inside and outside the DL community) would
find them very interesting.

------
mark_l_watson
Thanks for your past posts. Looking forward to Distill!

