I am wondering, too.
First I assumed that the answer would be something like "my average comment is longer than yours, so my average quick take is more likely to be post-sized", but from a brief look at our comment histories it doesn't seem to be the case; I'd say our comments are comparable in length.
When I write comments, I am in a "reactive mode" -- the text I have just read has triggered an emotion, and the emotion is driving my writing. I think as I write; when I am starting a comment I often have no idea how it would end. Sometimes the last paragraph even contradicts the first one.
When I write posts, I turn into a defensive perfectionist, I keep rewriting every sentence many times, and as a result, it takes me a day or two to write a post. Usually, after I finish it, I feel deeply dissatisfied with the outcome. Then I read it again the next day, and I conclude that it is okay.
The "start with a quick take, convert to post later" tactics allows me to channel the "reactive mode" energy into a post.
Perhaps you don't have the same psychological problem (I am quite aware that my emotions about writing posts are irrational and harmful, but that doesn't help to turn them off), and therefore this approach does not have the same effect for you.
Sometimes I start to write a quick take, and when it becomes too long I convert it to a post and continue writing. This helps me overcome a part of writer's block, because starting the quick take does not feel like a serious decision: I am not committing to write a long coherent text.
I am not sure I remember correctly which of my posts started this way, but it seems like most of the recent ones:
This has effectively doubled my posting frequency. (And, guessing by positive karma, that is a good thing?)
I believe that avoiding malevolent actors is very important, so thanks for thinking about that.
But I think you ignore the biological part of all this. Some people are not psychopaths because they have experienced a war, or their relatives did... they can be psychopaths simply because they have inherited the psychopath gene. So even if you eliminated all wars and similar things, there would always be psychopaths around to worry about.
Dolores is an example of someone with NPD and ASPD.
Oh, I see how combining that one could get NSDAP. ;)
Just a random thought:
I like the general sound of "growing stronger and better", but in real life you often have limited resources and competing goals. Like, you could get better at X, or better at Y, but you can't (with the same time and resources) become equally better both at X and at Y.
Sometimes the problem with people who push you to grow stronger is that they decide to push you to get stronger at X, while you would prefer to get stronger at Y instead. But from their perspective, X simply is better than Y, and you are not doing your best. Ironically, someone who doesn't insist that you do your best (from their perspective) could be a better partner to help you do your best (from your perspective).
Right now, you could take $1000 and sent them to an effective charity. That could be extraordinary (in the sense of: the vast majority of people would never do that) and virtuous!
So that is another way how things work differently in books and in real life -- you wouldn't get the emotional satisfaction of observing your impact. A book can also "cheat" by telling you about the impact even if the protagonist does not observe it.
I guess intelligence ruins this, too. You can do a virtuous thing by buying a homeless guy a lunch. But if you are smart, you will immediately realize that this doesn't remove the source of his problems, and tomorrow he will probably starve again. But feeding him every day would be too expensive. Again, in a book, it would be likely that you only need to feed the starving person once; then they get to the goal of their quest, or find a job, or something; that is, a one-time intervention solves the problem.
Thanks! This is the kind of specific data I would like to see. Exact numbers, split by industry.
(Also, for a fair comparison, how did the number of non-coops change in the last decade? I mean, in theory it is possible that the number of all kinds of companies have tripled.)
1300 coops employing 7000 people, that's like 5 or 6 people per coop. So it can simultaneously be "over thousand coops operating in USA" and "you don't know anyone who works in a coop, and neither does anyone in your bubble".
I know that large coops are possible. I mean, there is Mondragon... and... uhm, I am not sure if there is any other. That would be another interesting data point. And the question is, do other coops fail to grow because they don't want to, or because there is a problem they can't solve (in which case, what is the specific lesson they should learn from Mondragon)? EDIT: After reading other comments, I suspect the problem is "don't know how to scale".
I am a bit tired of the excuse "it is difficult because the capitalists hate you", because that's what I kept hearing in my childhood every time there was a shortage of toilet paper. And now I think the actual cause of the problems was the ignorance of the basic laws of economics, rather than foreign spies. And I get similar vibes from this article: a lot of excuses, no critical self-reflection.
Since this is supposed to be a rationalist blog, are you familiar with the concept of not writing your bottom line first? Because I don't get the impression that you are investigating a question impartially, carefully weighting all evidence. Instead, it seems like you have already made your conclusion (coops are the best), and your article is mostly about why we should ignore the evidence to the contrary.
There are a few more suspicious things in the text that a careful reader might notice, for example you mention that "the number of worker coops in the US has tripled in the last decade", but you avoid mentioning approximately what kind of numbers are talking about here. It is a huge differences whether there were thousand coops in 2015 and three thousand coops in 2025... or only one coop in 2015 and three coops in 2025. And the fact that you avoid mentioning this makes me suspect that it's more similar to the latter.
Another suspicious things is that your statements seem too general. The world is usually not like that. I would find it more credible if you said something like "coops are more likely to succeed in industry X, and less likely to succeed in industry Y" -- it would show that you have some actual data, and that you are willing to admit problems. Nothing in your text seems like this.
I am sympathetic to the idea of coops, but it seems to me that your articles are mere propaganda. Is there a reason why a person who actually wants to know the truth whatever it may be should read them?
Could you ask an AI to filter out the text you don't want?
(Like, ask an AI1 to filter the text, then use the rest to train AI2.)