What’s stopping you from doing this? If you know someone else was actively doing the same, and could keep you committed to the goal in some way, would that help? If that didn’t work, then, what would be stopping us?
In organized form, I’ve joining the Youtopia page, and the current efforts appear to be either busywork or best completed by a native speaker of a different language, there’s no obvious organization regarding generalized goals, and no news updates at all. I’m not sure if this is because MIRI is using a different format to organize volunteers, because MIRI doesn’t promote the Youtopia group that seriously, because MIRI doesn’t have any current long-term projects that can be easily presented to volunteers, or for some other reason.
For individual-oriented work, I’m not sure what to do, and I’m not confident the best person to do it. There are also three separate issues, of which there’s not obvious interrelation. Improving the Sequences and accessibility of the Sequences is the most immediate and obvious thing, and I can think of a couple different ways to go about this :
The obvious first step is to make /any/ eBook, which is why a number of people have done just that. This isn’t much more comprehensible than just linking to the Sequences page on the Wiki, and in some cases may be less useful, and most of the other projects seem better-designed than I can offer.
Improve indexing of the Sequences for online access. This does seem like low-hanging fruit, possibly because people are waiting for a canonical order, and the current ordering is terrible. However, I don’t think it’s a good idea to just randomly edit the Sequences Wiki page, and Discussion and Main aren’t really well-formatted for a long-term version-heavy discussion. (And it seems not Wise for my first Discussion or Main post to be “shake up the local textbook!”) I have started working on a dependency web, but this effort doesn’t seem produce marginal benefits until large sections are completed.
The Sequences themselves are written as short bite-sized pieces for a generalized audience in a specific context, which may not be optimal for long-form reading in a general context. In some cases, components that were good-enough to start with now have clearer explanations… that have circular redundancies. Writing bridge pieces to cover these attributes, or writing alternative descriptions for the more insider-centric Sequences, works within existing structures, and providing benefit at fairly small intervals. This requires fairly deep understanding of the Sequences, and does not appear to be a low-hanging fruit. (And again, not necessarily Wise for my first Discussion or Main post to be “shake up the local textbook!”)
But this is separate from MIRI’s ability to work with insiders and only marginally associated with its ability to work with outsiders. There are folk with very significant comparative advantages (ie, anyone inside MIRI, anyone in California, most people who accept their axioms) on these matters, and while outsiders have managed to have major impact despite that, they were LukeProg with a low-hanging fruit of basic nonprofit organization, which is a pretty high bar to match.
There are some possibilities—translating prominent posts to remove excessive jargon or wordiness (or even Upgoer Fiving them), working on some reputation problems—but none of these seem to have obvious solutions, and wrong efforts could even have negative impact. See, for example, a lot of coverage in more mainstream web media. I’ve also got a significant anti-academic streak, so it’s a little hard for me to understand the specific concern that Scott Alexander/su3su2u1 were raising, which may complicate matters further.
In organized form, I’ve joining the Youtopia page, and the current efforts appear to be either busywork or best completed by a native speaker of a different language, there’s no obvious organization regarding generalized goals, and no news updates at all. I’m not sure if this is because MIRI is using a different format to organize volunteers, because MIRI doesn’t promote the Youtopia group that seriously, because MIRI doesn’t have any current long-term projects that can be easily presented to volunteers, or for some other reason.
For individual-oriented work, I’m not sure what to do, and I’m not confident the best person to do it. There are also three separate issues, of which there’s not obvious interrelation. Improving the Sequences and accessibility of the Sequences is the most immediate and obvious thing, and I can think of a couple different ways to go about this :
The obvious first step is to make /any/ eBook, which is why a number of people have done just that. This isn’t much more comprehensible than just linking to the Sequences page on the Wiki, and in some cases may be less useful, and most of the other projects seem better-designed than I can offer.
Improve indexing of the Sequences for online access. This does seem like low-hanging fruit, possibly because people are waiting for a canonical order, and the current ordering is terrible. However, I don’t think it’s a good idea to just randomly edit the Sequences Wiki page, and Discussion and Main aren’t really well-formatted for a long-term version-heavy discussion. (And it seems not Wise for my first Discussion or Main post to be “shake up the local textbook!”) I have started working on a dependency web, but this effort doesn’t seem produce marginal benefits until large sections are completed.
The Sequences themselves are written as short bite-sized pieces for a generalized audience in a specific context, which may not be optimal for long-form reading in a general context. In some cases, components that were good-enough to start with now have clearer explanations… that have circular redundancies. Writing bridge pieces to cover these attributes, or writing alternative descriptions for the more insider-centric Sequences, works within existing structures, and providing benefit at fairly small intervals. This requires fairly deep understanding of the Sequences, and does not appear to be a low-hanging fruit. (And again, not necessarily Wise for my first Discussion or Main post to be “shake up the local textbook!”)
But this is separate from MIRI’s ability to work with insiders and only marginally associated with its ability to work with outsiders. There are folk with very significant comparative advantages (ie, anyone inside MIRI, anyone in California, most people who accept their axioms) on these matters, and while outsiders have managed to have major impact despite that, they were LukeProg with a low-hanging fruit of basic nonprofit organization, which is a pretty high bar to match.
There are some possibilities—translating prominent posts to remove excessive jargon or wordiness (or even Upgoer Fiving them), working on some reputation problems—but none of these seem to have obvious solutions, and wrong efforts could even have negative impact. See, for example, a lot of coverage in more mainstream web media. I’ve also got a significant anti-academic streak, so it’s a little hard for me to understand the specific concern that Scott Alexander/su3su2u1 were raising, which may complicate matters further.