Dwarkesh

I got...

very positive feedback from all of that.

And then eventually I took the plunge to start my own blog.

But it's ridiculous.

Like what other career do you need seven years of positive feedback before you like apply for your first position?

That's right.

I mean, you have the same thing.

You've gotten rave reviews for all of your podcasts and then you're kind of trying to transfer to blogging with probably this

First of all, you have a fan base.

People are going to read your blog.

That, I think, is one thing, is people are just afraid no one will read it, which is probably true for most people's first blog.

And then, like...

there are enough people who like you that you'll probably get mostly positive feedback, even if the first things you write aren't that polished.

So I think you and I both had that.

A lot of people I know who got into blogging kind of had something like that.

And I think that's one way to get over the fear gap.

Slightly pushing back against that, I have statistics for the first several years of Slate Star Codex and it really did grow extremely gradually.

Like the usual pattern is something like

Every viral hit, 1% of the people who read your viral hit stick around.

And so after like dozens of viral hits, then you have a fan base.