Has someone re-read the sequences? did you find value in doing so?
Further, I do think the comments on each of the essays are worthy of reading, something I did not do the first time. I can pinpoint a few comments from people in this community on the essays which were very insightful! I wonder if I lost something by not participating in it or by not having read all the comments when I was reading the sequences.
I’ve reread portions of the Sequences, and have derived notable additional value from it. Particularly fruitful at one point (many years ago) was when I reread a bunch of the “Map and territory” stuff (Noticing Confusion; Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions; Fake Beliefs) while substituting in examples of “my beliefs about myself” in place of all of Eliezer’s examples—because somehow that was a different domain I hadn’t trained the concepts on when I read it the first time.
I plan to probably do more such exercises soon. I’ve found “check where my trigger-action patterns are and aren’t matching the normative patterns suggested by the Sequences, and design exercises to investigate this” pretty useful in general, and its been ~5 years since I’ve done it, which seems time for a re-do.
I haven’t done a full re-read, but I have re-read certain chapters. It was hella helpful. The experience was often, “Ohhhh, I only got the shadow of the idea on my first pass, it’s grown since then but has been scattered, and the reread let me unify the ideas and feel confident I’m now getting the core idea and it’s repercussions.”
I’ve reread them about 3-4 times. Two of those times were with comments (the first time and the most recent time). I found reading the comments quite valuable.
I did, but my last re-reading was long ago, so I don’t remember the exact impression.
The comments are sometimes nice, but together they make the already-too-long sequences ten times longer. It would be nice to pick (and edit, if necessary) the best comments for the book version. Because I usually recommend reading the book instead of web, precisely because it is better to read the entire book than to read 10% of the web version and then decide it is too much. So I think you didn’t lose much by not reading the comments.
It would be nice to pick (and edit, if necessary) the best comments for the book version.
A roundup like that would be valuable.
I usually recommend reading the book instead of web, precisely because it is better to read the entire book than to read 10% of the web version and then decide it is too much.
Does this consideration apply to re-reads as strongly?
Does this consideration apply to re-reads as strongly?
Reading entire Sequences with all comments seems like an enormous waste of time; that’s a ton of text. Your time would be better spent reading a few other books, I think.
That’s just my opinion, though; see other comments.
Hmm, I like this idea. I’ve been thinking of ways to curate and synthesize comment sections for a while, and the original sequences might be a good place to put that in action.
It would be nice to have a “comment synthesis” that is written sufficiently long after the debate ended (not sooner than one month after publishing the original article?).
By the way, if you do this for many articles in the Sequences, perhaps you could also afterwards join those reactions into one big “community reaction to the Sequences”, as a new article where people could read it all in one place.
Has someone re-read the sequences? did you find value in doing so?
Further, I do think the comments on each of the essays are worthy of reading, something I did not do the first time. I can pinpoint a few comments from people in this community on the essays which were very insightful! I wonder if I lost something by not participating in it or by not having read all the comments when I was reading the sequences.
I’ve reread portions of the Sequences, and have derived notable additional value from it. Particularly fruitful at one point (many years ago) was when I reread a bunch of the “Map and territory” stuff (Noticing Confusion; Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions; Fake Beliefs) while substituting in examples of “my beliefs about myself” in place of all of Eliezer’s examples—because somehow that was a different domain I hadn’t trained the concepts on when I read it the first time.
I plan to probably do more such exercises soon. I’ve found “check where my trigger-action patterns are and aren’t matching the normative patterns suggested by the Sequences, and design exercises to investigate this” pretty useful in general, and its been ~5 years since I’ve done it, which seems time for a re-do.
I’d love to see exercises for “Lonely Dissent”.
I haven’t done a full re-read, but I have re-read certain chapters. It was hella helpful. The experience was often, “Ohhhh, I only got the shadow of the idea on my first pass, it’s grown since then but has been scattered, and the reread let me unify the ideas and feel confident I’m now getting the core idea and it’s repercussions.”
I’ve reread them about 3-4 times. Two of those times were with comments (the first time and the most recent time). I found reading the comments quite valuable.
I did, but my last re-reading was long ago, so I don’t remember the exact impression.
The comments are sometimes nice, but together they make the already-too-long sequences ten times longer. It would be nice to pick (and edit, if necessary) the best comments for the book version. Because I usually recommend reading the book instead of web, precisely because it is better to read the entire book than to read 10% of the web version and then decide it is too much. So I think you didn’t lose much by not reading the comments.
A roundup like that would be valuable.
Does this consideration apply to re-reads as strongly?
Reading entire Sequences with all comments seems like an enormous waste of time; that’s a ton of text. Your time would be better spent reading a few other books, I think.
That’s just my opinion, though; see other comments.
Hmm, I like this idea. I’ve been thinking of ways to curate and synthesize comment sections for a while, and the original sequences might be a good place to put that in action.
It would be nice to have a “comment synthesis” that is written sufficiently long after the debate ended (not sooner than one month after publishing the original article?).
By the way, if you do this for many articles in the Sequences, perhaps you could also afterwards join those reactions into one big “community reaction to the Sequences”, as a new article where people could read it all in one place.