---
title: "Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?"
slug: why-is-every-rationalist-blog-post-way-too-long
url: https://listedarticles.com/articles/why-is-every-rationalist-blog-post-way-too-long
canonical_url: https://alexwennerberg.com/blog/2026-10-13-long.html
content_type: opinion
language: en
published_at: 2026-10-13T00:00:00.000Z
updated_at: 2026-10-15T05:16:19.352Z
author: "Alex Wennerberg"
authored_by: human
publisher: "alex wennerberg"
publisher_url: https://alexwennerberg.com/
topics: ["Writing", "Opinion", "Culture"]
license: all-rights-reserved
word_count: 371
reading_minutes: 2
citation: "Alex Wennerberg, alex wennerberg. \"Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?.\" 13 Oct 2026. https://alexwennerberg.com/blog/2026-10-13-long.html (all-rights-reserved)"
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---

# Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?

> Alex Wennerberg argues that rationalist bloggers such as Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky write posts that are far too long, spending effort on layers of detail and nuance instead of questioning their premises, and says what the verbose style lacks is wisdom: the discretion to know which ideas are worth pursuing and what needs saying.

For my piece on [Catholic miracle
apologetics](https://alexwennerberg.com/blog/2026-09-17-apologetics.html), I
read (correction: skimmed) a 25,000-word post by rationalist blogger Scott
Alexander. My piece, which cited (but does not focus on) his, ended up being a
cool 2,700 words. I don't think it would benefit from being longer, and it was
the result of me cutting around 70% of the text I initially wrote.

Rationalist bloggers do not generally appear to have this impulse. Eliezer Yudkowsky's
"sequences" are over [one million words
long](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EauwsXht4jrjTTE9m/reading-the-sequences-before-starting-to-post-costs-and).
Nearly every blog post I have read in this ecosystem, even the rare one that
contains some good ideas, is painfully long and extremely tedious. These
bloggers tend to spend their time on precisely the wrong things, i.e.
adding layers of detail and nuance rather than interrogating
the one or two assumptions they make at the start or
broadening their philosophical background beyond the
collection of texts popular within their subculture.

It seems to me that, in this community, verbosity is a substitute for
thoroughness: surely, if someone wrote *a lot* about something, and is able to
demonstrate that by producing a large volume of text, they must have something
worthwhile to say about it? Consider when blogger
[Gwern](https://gwern.net/nicotine) explained that nicotine, actually, is not
addictive, and is good for you, as long as you don't smoke it, over the course
of 9,000 words, with over 100 references. It turns out, actually, nicotine [is
addictive, and is bad for
you](https://psychotechnology.substack.com/i/178248783/ps-be-careful) even if
you don't smoke it, as you probably already obviously knew.

In any case, what is missing from this endlessly verbose rationalist writing
style is *wisdom*. Wisdom involves discretion: an intuition for what ideas are
and are not worth seriously pursuing, and the ability to determine what does
and does not need to be said. This community, broadly speaking, does
not seem to value wisdom as a trait at all; the idea that something may be
true, valuable, or good merely because it is common sense or inherited
tradition is anathema to them. Instead, there is a heavy bias towards that
which is unconventional and counterculture, with the amount of ink
spilled for heterodox ideas taken as evidence in itself that these ideas are worth
taking seriously.