Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?

Alex Wennerberg argues that much of rationalist writing is unnecessarily long and that length is often used as a proxy for intellectual rigor. After skimming a 25,000-word piece by Scott Alexander and producing a 2,700-word response (after cutting roughly 70% of an initial draft), Wennerberg contrasts concise, targeted exposition with the sprawling outputs common in the community: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “sequences” exceed one million words, and Gwern’s 9,000-word nicotine essay with over 100 references is cited as an example where voluminous analysis still reached the wrong conclusion about nicotine’s addictiveness and harms. The critique centers on form over function: bloggers pile on nuance and detail instead of interrogating core assumptions or widening their philosophical repertoire beyond in-group texts.

The substantive claim is that wisdom - discretion about what to pursue and what to say - is largely absent from the subculture. Wennerberg contends the community treats heterodoxy and countercultural positions as inherently valuable and interprets verbosity as evidence of worth, while dismissing common-sense or traditional insights out of hand. The result is an ecosystem that rewards exhaustive exposition rather than clear, assumption-focused thinking and the judgment needed to know when to stop writing.