INTP male programmer here. I’ve never posted an article and rarely comment.
One thing which keeps me from doing is actually HPMoR, and EY’s posts and sequences. They’re all really long, and seem to be considered required reading. I know its EY’s style; he seems to prefer narratives. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to read all that, and much prefer a terser Hansonian style.
A shorter “getting started” guide would help me. Would it help others?
I’ll occasionally adapt it, e.g. Swapping the first two posts around, for someone who has an academic background and will be more interested in an academic paper to start with.
Anyone looking for my current, extended version, can find it here.
I’ve been thinking about this problem lately, and I agree it’s a problem. I have some tentative ideas for starting to address it, which I’ll post to Discussion next week. I’d like more data on where the stumbling blocks are, though.
Are there LW posts (by Eliezer or whoever) that you have found helpful, readable, concise, etc.? If so, what are some of the better examples? Would you say, for example, that Lukeprog and Hanson’s styles work for you about equally well?
What are some examples of specific posts (or series of posts) you haven’t gotten through? How much was a result of length, how much a result of content (e.g., too difficult or boring or mathy), and how much a result of style (e.g., too narrative or unstructured or jargony)?
What are specific ideas, perspectives, approaches, or terms you feel (or have been told) you’re currently missing out on? The more examples of this the better.
ETA: I’d be interested in others’ responses to this too.
The title is descriptive and the text is short and to the point. Empirical support is present and clearly stated. Of course it could be shortened quite a bit more without losing any information, but I don’t find it excessively verbose.
Its a long post, not trivial to follow, and when reading its not clear how the effort will pay off. Perhaps this is evidence of a short attention span, but I’ve generally found that most concepts can be expressed succinctly. It might also be a habit of my profession that I try and make writings as terse and general as possible.
I suspect status and article length are highly correlated (e.g., people read autobiographies of famous people), and so longer writings might be ways to signal status.
I can produce more examples, but the above two are archetypal for me.
3)
Well, I don’t know what I don’t know ;) But to list a few things:
Pros and cons of frequentist vs. bayesian approaches. Everything I read here seems pro-bayesian, but other (statistics) sites I look at promote a mix of the two approaches.
Why so little discussion of mechanisms which improve the rationality of group action and decision-making? Is that topic too close to the mind-killer, or have I missed those articles?
I find appeals to rationality during strictly normative argument irrational, because people don’t seem to adopt ethics on the basis of rationality or consistency. Thus I’m confused by the frequency of ethical discussions here. Am I missing something about ethics and rationality? Or just wrong? Something on a general rationalist approach to ethics would be helpful to me.
Agreed. I’d be quite interested which post non-LW friends found useful (and if they passed them on to anyone else). My mom ended up using Twelve Virtues as a discussion reading in the first day of her eled class (elementary education).
I don’t think think HPMoR is required reading to learn rationality from LW and related places, and is one of the few things making rationality general-interest at this point.
I do agree that a short “getting started” guide would be helpful, though.
Only a minority of respondents to the 2012 survey had read “about 75%” or “nearly all” of the sequences. So long as you’ve read the links in the welcome thread and you’re prepared to be corrected you should be fine.
INTP male programmer here. I’ve never posted an article and rarely comment.
One thing which keeps me from doing is actually HPMoR, and EY’s posts and sequences. They’re all really long, and seem to be considered required reading. I know its EY’s style; he seems to prefer narratives. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to read all that, and much prefer a terser Hansonian style.
A shorter “getting started” guide would help me. Would it help others?
I’ve been giving the following post list to friends, to get them into LW:
1) The Twelve Virtues
2) Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgements of Global Risk
3) The Simple Truth
4) The Useful Idea of Truth
5) What do we mean by rationality?
6) What is evidence?
7) Rationality: Appreciating Cognitive Algorithms
8) Skill: The Map is Not the Territory
9) Firewalling the Optimal from the Rational
10) The Lens that Sees its Flaws
11) The Martial Art of Rationality
12) No One Can Exempt You From Rationality’s Laws
I’ll occasionally adapt it, e.g. Swapping the first two posts around, for someone who has an academic background and will be more interested in an academic paper to start with.
Anyone looking for my current, extended version, can find it here.
I’ve been thinking about this problem lately, and I agree it’s a problem. I have some tentative ideas for starting to address it, which I’ll post to Discussion next week. I’d like more data on where the stumbling blocks are, though.
Are there LW posts (by Eliezer or whoever) that you have found helpful, readable, concise, etc.? If so, what are some of the better examples? Would you say, for example, that Lukeprog and Hanson’s styles work for you about equally well?
What are some examples of specific posts (or series of posts) you haven’t gotten through? How much was a result of length, how much a result of content (e.g., too difficult or boring or mathy), and how much a result of style (e.g., too narrative or unstructured or jargony)?
What are specific ideas, perspectives, approaches, or terms you feel (or have been told) you’re currently missing out on? The more examples of this the better.
ETA: I’d be interested in others’ responses to this too.
From the articles linked from Welcome to Less Wrong:
1) http://lesswrong.com/lw/jx/we_change_our_minds_less_often_than_we_think/
The title is descriptive and the text is short and to the point. Empirical support is present and clearly stated. Of course it could be shortened quite a bit more without losing any information, but I don’t find it excessively verbose.
2) http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message
Its a long post, not trivial to follow, and when reading its not clear how the effort will pay off. Perhaps this is evidence of a short attention span, but I’ve generally found that most concepts can be expressed succinctly. It might also be a habit of my profession that I try and make writings as terse and general as possible.
I suspect status and article length are highly correlated (e.g., people read autobiographies of famous people), and so longer writings might be ways to signal status.
I can produce more examples, but the above two are archetypal for me.
3) Well, I don’t know what I don’t know ;) But to list a few things:
Pros and cons of frequentist vs. bayesian approaches. Everything I read here seems pro-bayesian, but other (statistics) sites I look at promote a mix of the two approaches.
Why so little discussion of mechanisms which improve the rationality of group action and decision-making? Is that topic too close to the mind-killer, or have I missed those articles?
I find appeals to rationality during strictly normative argument irrational, because people don’t seem to adopt ethics on the basis of rationality or consistency. Thus I’m confused by the frequency of ethical discussions here. Am I missing something about ethics and rationality? Or just wrong? Something on a general rationalist approach to ethics would be helpful to me.
Agreed. I’d be quite interested which post non-LW friends found useful (and if they passed them on to anyone else). My mom ended up using Twelve Virtues as a discussion reading in the first day of her eled class (elementary education).
I don’t think think HPMoR is required reading to learn rationality from LW and related places, and is one of the few things making rationality general-interest at this point.
I do agree that a short “getting started” guide would be helpful, though.
Only a minority of respondents to the 2012 survey had read “about 75%” or “nearly all” of the sequences. So long as you’ve read the links in the welcome thread and you’re prepared to be corrected you should be fine.