Highly Opinionated Advice on How to Write ML Papers — LessWrong

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Case study: The abstract of refusal is mediated by a single direction, broken down into the purpose of each sentence Your research only matters if people read, understand, and build upon it. This means that writing a good paper is a critical part of the research process. Further, the process of writing forces you to clarify your own thinking in ways that often reveal gaps or new insights - I’ve often only properly understood an idea after writing it up. Yet, to many, writing feels less fun than research and is treated as an after thought - a common but critical mistake. In my experience supervising 20+ papers and reading/appreciating/being annoyed by a bunch more, I've developed my own opinionated framework for what I think makes a paper good and how to approach the writing process. I try to lay this out in this post, along with a bunch of concrete advice.[1] This post assumes you’ve already done a bunch of technical research, and focuses on how to effectively share it with the world,

x Highly Opinionated Advice on How to Write ML Papers — LessWrong How I Think About My Research Process AI Practical Frontpage 92 Highly Opinionated Advice on How to Write ML Papers by Neel Nanda 12th May 2025 AI Alignment Forum 39 min read 4 92 Ω 33 TL;DR The essence of an ideal paper is the narrative : a short, rigorous and evidence-based technical story you tell, with a takeaway the readers care about What? A narrative is fundamentally about a contribution to our body of knowledge: one to three specific novel claims that fit within a cohesive theme Why? You need rigorous empirical evidence

Highly Opinionated Advice on How to Write ML Papers — LessWrong

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