Summarizing the Sequences Proposal
As I mentioned here, a large number of the sequence posts have not ever been summarized, and doing so would help the sequence rerun efforts, as well as helping to organize all of EY’s posts transplanted to Less Wrong from Overcoming Bias. It might even be a first step towards the proposed program to create “exercises” regarding each of the sequences.
I am very willing to take an active role in this, but I don’t really want to write summaries for hundreds of posts on my own, so I am asking for help. Writing a summary should not take very much time, and it would be a very easy way for you to help out with the administration of Less Wrong. In order to write a summary, one only has to read the article, and try to write the main point of the post in a few sentences. You can find plenty of examples of summaries that are already done here, as well as a lot of posts that haven’t been summarized yet.
This is a list of upcoming posts in the rerunning the sequences series that haven’t been summarized yet. If you would like to claim a batch (something like 5 posts) to summarize, leave a comment to that effect below, and make another comment when you have posted the summary on the wiki (so that you can be rewarded with some karma for your contribution). When a post is claimed, I will mark that it’s been claimed, and then mark it again when the summary has been posted. Once all of these posts have been claimed/summarized, I’ll post a new list.
(KPier)
Say Not “Complexity”
My Wild and Reckless Youth
Failing to Learn from History
Making History Available
Stranger Than History
Explain/Worship/Ignore?
(/KPier) (Completed)
Absurdity Heuristic, Absurdity Bias
Why is the Future So Absurd?
Anchoring and Adjustment
The Crackpot Offer
Radical Honesty
We Don’t Really Want Your Participation
Applause Lights
Rationality and the English Language
Human Evil and Muddled Thinking
Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)
Why I’m Blooking
Kahneman’s Planning Anecdote
Conjunction Controversy (Or, How They Nail It Down)
Burdensome Details
What is Evidence?
The Lens That Sees Its Flaws
How Much Evidence Does It Take?
Einstein’s Arrogance
Occam’s Razor
9⁄26 is Petrov Day
How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
The Bottom Line
What Evidence Filtered Evidence?
Rationalization
Recommended Rationalist Reading
A Rational Argument
PS. I just spent five minutes trying to get those little blue things to go away, and I can’t get them to. Does anyone know how? Edit: Fixed—Nesov
You might consider doing a ‘work party’ of some kind for this. Perhaps everyone gets on tinychat.com for an hour or two and cranks them out. That way it’s a bit of a social event. You might also ask a meetup group(s) to get together and do a bunch of these.
I’ll take Batch 1 (“Say Not Complexity” through “Explain, Worship, Ignore.”)
Completed! (If someone would look them over and correct me if I’ve got the style wrong, that would be great. And I can take another group, if needed.)
Great summaries! Consider adding content to other wiki pages.
For “Fake Causality” to “Futility of Emergence” MinibearRex has provided summaries in the reruns, without taking them from the wiki. I’m going to go ahead and copy these descriptions into the wiki.
The blue things look like the “external link” icons that are supposed to appear after the anchor text. You might want to double-check how you’re forming the links, but you would have already done that, so I’m confused. Also, no other posts are doing this, so it’s not server-side.