Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Just Try It: Quantity Trumps Quality - Less Wrong

62 Post author: atucker 04 April 2011 01:13AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2011 01:18:54PM 1 point [-]

But that's just wrong. If you're doing it right your mean creeps steadily upward and that's how you hit high points.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 April 2011 01:59:40PM *  3 points [-]

Plus writing a lot will give you practice, gradually pushing up the mean.

But that's just wrong. If you're doing it right your mean creeps steadily upward and that's how you hit high points.

Not all that wrong it would seem.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2011 04:20:43PM -2 points [-]

The "plus" is right, the main idea is wrong.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2011 02:06:24AM *  9 points [-]

Personally I would have put the main idea as the 'plus'. Perhaps overstated but clearly not wrong.

If the quality of works is distributed around a mean then more works you produce the more likely it is for a high quality work to emerge. The most remarkable works will come from the very best authors when they are having a really good day (or month or year). Producing more from the same distribution will obviously give more chances for you to produce something that is outstanding.

On a related note a 'one hit wonder' can be said to be regressing to his mean when his other works flop.

Not 'just wrong'. It's just obvious and less important overall than the training effect.