Speaking of OB, We have an expansive list of Eliezer’s posts organized by topic but no such sequence exists for Robin Hanson. His posts on status seeking are incredibly important for human rationality.
I purpose that we produce a sequence devoted to RH’s posts. If someone who read most of his posts can point me in the right direction I volunteer to do it. My summer’s off from classes, I just have work and then my private projects and public project would be good for me to signal usefulness to LW, OB and the communities associated with them.
EDIT: RH gave me his blessing. I’m reading OB. Just crossed through to 2007. Writing major themes and interconnections as I go.
His posts on status seeking are incredibly important for human rationality.
I think he has an unfortunate tendency to treat status as a golden hammer, attempting to explain everything in terms of status, whether or not it’s a good explanation.
I think he has an unfortunate tendency to treat status as a golden hammer, attempting to explain everything in terms of status, whether or not it’s a good explanation.
His over-eager application to everything new he hears does not greatly diminish the usefulness of his foundational work on the general effects of status. Those are the ones Karmakaiser would want an index of.
If you’re willing to spend your summer doing whatever Less Wrong thinks is high-value, are you taking suggestions? It’s plausible that there is higher value stuff than this proposal, possibly much higher value.
My education/math level is college sophomore with an intro C and calc I class under my belt so anything I do would have to be basic grunt work. My private projects were just goign to be getting a head start on fall classes with SICP and Calc II.
Within those parameters of my own usefulness, yea I’m cool doing stuff for LW/SIAI/CMR . PM me if you got suggestions.
The black dog is stronger than I. My mother died in May and I took on these projects in an attempt to stay busy and not depressed. Unfortunately all I did was damage my reputation by appearing flighty and flaky. After losing about 60$ on Beeminder, I realized that any special projects must be put on hold until I sort myself out. It’s a good project to do, Hanson has a lot of unique insights, but I cannot, for now at least, do them.
Well, it wasn’t for this, but I did compile 24 of the better posts on medicine at http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics#fn11 (as an illustration of the low marginal value of much medicine).
I got sidetracked by Evil Real Life Issues of Local Importance and didn’t make much progress in July on a Comprehensive post about a topic (my first post was going to be about the topic “If truth is lovecraftian (that is there exist real basilisks, Why Use Truth, this the recent post as a fulcrum and using other posts to support the theme) that approach is proving to complex for my available time commitment so I’m just going to break it up into shorter posts. That should allow me to get something out next week and produce a summary of large-ish chunks of posts and how they relate to each other assuming the Evil Local Important Issues have truly gone away and I can get some hobby non work focus stuff done. Depressingly I didn’t have enough time for Summer Projects as I thought so I’ll only be able to sum up a small amount of the whole as classes begin in the fall and then I’ll be juggling work/school life and I simply won’t have energy for anything but short posts.
Sorry for the delay, but it looks like Hofstadter’s Law has struck me. You’ll most likely see progress intermittently with larger swaths being done during academic breaks. I honestly thought my summer was more free, again, whoops.
EY also posts links to other useful posts of his for reference but I find reading the sequences in indexed order is easier than reading tags or chronological order. Every blogger has important ideas that they want to say and sometimes tags don’t do everything you need them to. Like EY’s posts, he installed a karma/voting system late in his blogging career and so his early posts in particular may be unduly ignored.
I imagine it’d be boring to index your own posts in your blog into an ebook like format since you already know your ideas. Since I haven’t read all of OB it might even be fun for me to do it. I wouldn’t be procrastinating to read OB anymore. It’d be working. Yay!
I’ll let RH be the final arbitrator since it’s his blog and just email him asking if he wants something like this done. I’m a bored undergrad in need of a project so why not?
Right but the point is to expand the intellectual horizons of LessWrongers. At the very least to familiarize them with the origin and arguments for many ideas they probably run across on this site all the time. A sequence that just appears in the wiki will have little immediate impact and will have more of a delayed effect (since sequence readers will also start reading the Hanson sequences).
They will show up the “New on Overcoming Bias” so I think they will still be read live, though they might not be discussed on LW.. Also if posted on OB I think RH will probably be more willing to give feedback either before they are posted or in the comment section, which would much improve the quality of such articles.
But OB is now his personal blog, you writing posts might seem like sending the signal that he wants OB to go back to what it was.
Maybe cross-post them? Thought that might cause some odd feelings for those who read both OB and LW. “Oh no, where do I comment I can’t decide!” Those who don’t read OB, many new posters probably aren’t even familiar with it, will also be more willing to comment on it here than there.
At the bare minimum once you are done a promoted Main Post called: “The Hanson Sequences” or something like that might work to grab peoples attention.
I really hope RH approves something like this. His thinking has been a great behind the scenes influence on many key rationalists and LWers. But since they are harder to conveniently cite people thus straw man his arguments (they especially like to do with the status theories) or worse misapply or misuse them.
My email included a link to this comment chain so he’ll be aware of all this. I’ll let him dictate how and where the summary is posted for the RH sequences.
Considering his ideas have had a such a great influence on us, why don’t we have summary posts of his positions to frame proper sequences? To give an example a summary post like this of Robins positions on a given topic.
Speaking of OB, We have an expansive list of Eliezer’s posts organized by topic but no such sequence exists for Robin Hanson. His posts on status seeking are incredibly important for human rationality.
I purpose that we produce a sequence devoted to RH’s posts. If someone who read most of his posts can point me in the right direction I volunteer to do it. My summer’s off from classes, I just have work and then my private projects and public project would be good for me to signal usefulness to LW, OB and the communities associated with them.
EDIT: RH gave me his blessing. I’m reading OB. Just crossed through to 2007. Writing major themes and interconnections as I go.
I think he has an unfortunate tendency to treat status as a golden hammer, attempting to explain everything in terms of status, whether or not it’s a good explanation.
His over-eager application to everything new he hears does not greatly diminish the usefulness of his foundational work on the general effects of status. Those are the ones Karmakaiser would want an index of.
Of all the things you and I agree on, I never thought this point would be one.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Robin himself agreed with this criticism.
Sure, it would increase his status among rationalists. :D
If you’re willing to spend your summer doing whatever Less Wrong thinks is high-value, are you taking suggestions? It’s plausible that there is higher value stuff than this proposal, possibly much higher value.
My education/math level is college sophomore with an intro C and calc I class under my belt so anything I do would have to be basic grunt work. My private projects were just goign to be getting a head start on fall classes with SICP and Calc II.
Within those parameters of my own usefulness, yea I’m cool doing stuff for LW/SIAI/CMR . PM me if you got suggestions.
When can we expect the first post of this series?
I’ll be frank.
The black dog is stronger than I. My mother died in May and I took on these projects in an attempt to stay busy and not depressed. Unfortunately all I did was damage my reputation by appearing flighty and flaky. After losing about 60$ on Beeminder, I realized that any special projects must be put on hold until I sort myself out. It’s a good project to do, Hanson has a lot of unique insights, but I cannot, for now at least, do them.
That is so horrible to hear! My condolences.
Well, it wasn’t for this, but I did compile 24 of the better posts on medicine at http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics#fn11 (as an illustration of the low marginal value of much medicine).
I got sidetracked by Evil Real Life Issues of Local Importance and didn’t make much progress in July on a Comprehensive post about a topic (my first post was going to be about the topic “If truth is lovecraftian (that is there exist real basilisks, Why Use Truth, this the recent post as a fulcrum and using other posts to support the theme) that approach is proving to complex for my available time commitment so I’m just going to break it up into shorter posts. That should allow me to get something out next week and produce a summary of large-ish chunks of posts and how they relate to each other assuming the Evil Local Important Issues have truly gone away and I can get some hobby non work focus stuff done. Depressingly I didn’t have enough time for Summer Projects as I thought so I’ll only be able to sum up a small amount of the whole as classes begin in the fall and then I’ll be juggling work/school life and I simply won’t have energy for anything but short posts.
Sorry for the delay, but it looks like Hofstadter’s Law has struck me. You’ll most likely see progress intermittently with larger swaths being done during academic breaks. I honestly thought my summer was more free, again, whoops.
Robin tags his own posts by topic.
EY also posts links to other useful posts of his for reference but I find reading the sequences in indexed order is easier than reading tags or chronological order. Every blogger has important ideas that they want to say and sometimes tags don’t do everything you need them to. Like EY’s posts, he installed a karma/voting system late in his blogging career and so his early posts in particular may be unduly ignored.
I imagine it’d be boring to index your own posts in your blog into an ebook like format since you already know your ideas. Since I haven’t read all of OB it might even be fun for me to do it. I wouldn’t be procrastinating to read OB anymore. It’d be working. Yay!
I’ll let RH be the final arbitrator since it’s his blog and just email him asking if he wants something like this done. I’m a bored undergrad in need of a project so why not?
Not if he wants it done. Ask if he has any objection to you writing something like this for LW.
Eh, it’s his blog so I’d feel better making it for his site and just linking his index in the sequences.
Right but the point is to expand the intellectual horizons of LessWrongers. At the very least to familiarize them with the origin and arguments for many ideas they probably run across on this site all the time. A sequence that just appears in the wiki will have little immediate impact and will have more of a delayed effect (since sequence readers will also start reading the Hanson sequences).
They will show up the “New on Overcoming Bias” so I think they will still be read live, though they might not be discussed on LW.. Also if posted on OB I think RH will probably be more willing to give feedback either before they are posted or in the comment section, which would much improve the quality of such articles.
But OB is now his personal blog, you writing posts might seem like sending the signal that he wants OB to go back to what it was.
Maybe cross-post them? Thought that might cause some odd feelings for those who read both OB and LW. “Oh no, where do I comment I can’t decide!” Those who don’t read OB, many new posters probably aren’t even familiar with it, will also be more willing to comment on it here than there.
Cross post sounds good. Every important sequence index could follow a “Humans guide to words” like summary.
At the bare minimum once you are done a promoted Main Post called: “The Hanson Sequences” or something like that might work to grab peoples attention.
I really hope RH approves something like this. His thinking has been a great behind the scenes influence on many key rationalists and LWers. But since they are harder to conveniently cite people thus straw man his arguments (they especially like to do with the status theories) or worse misapply or misuse them.
My email included a link to this comment chain so he’ll be aware of all this. I’ll let him dictate how and where the summary is posted for the RH sequences.
Oh of course I was just thinking out loud.
No problem if he approves I’ll post a top level discussion thread letting people know what’s going on and what shape he would like it to take etc.
We tag articles by topic on LW too.
Considering his ideas have had a such a great influence on us, why don’t we have summary posts of his positions to frame proper sequences? To give an example a summary post like this of Robins positions on a given topic.