I’m pretty sad a post that consists entirely of tribal signaling has been voted up like this. This post is literally asking people to publicly endorse the Sequences because they’re somehow under-attack (by whom?!) and no one agrees with them any more. Because some of us think having more smart people who disagree with us would improve Less Wrong? I find glib notions of a “singularity religion” obnoxious but what exactly is the point of asking people here to announce their allegiance to the site founder’s collection of blog posts?
This post is literally asking people to publicly endorse the Sequences because they’re somehow under-attack (by whom?!) and no one agrees with them any more.
To me it seems more like a spreading attitude of—“The Sequences are not that much important. Honestly, almost nobody reads all of them; they are just too long (and their value does not correspond to their length). Telling someone to ‘read the Sequences’ is just a polite way to say ‘fuck you’; obviously nobody could mean that literally.”
I have read most of the Sequences. In my opinion it is material really worth reading; not only better than 99% of internet, but if it became a book, it would be also better than 99% of books. (Making it a book would be a significant improvement, because there would be an unambiguous ordering of the chapters.) It contains a lot of information, and the information makes sense. And unlike many interesting books, it is not “repeating the basic idea over and over, using different words, adding a few details”. It talks about truth, then about mind, then about biases, then about language, then about quantum physics, etc. For me reading the Sequences was very much worth my time, and I would honestly recommend it to everyone interested in these topics.
What is then wrong with the attitude described above? New members, who didn’t read the Sequences yet, are making a decision whether reading the Sequences is worth their time, or whether the information can be learned as a side effect or reading LW forum. As a social species, we often make our decision by what other people are doing. So if it seems that nobody is reading the Sequences, why should I? This is why it is useful that someone makes a public announcement of “I have read the Sequences and it was worth it”. It needs to be said explicitly, because many people who didn’t read the Sequences are saying that explicitly. -- This is not an attack on people who don’t read the Sequences and admit it openly. Speaking the truth is the right thing to do. But if we don’t want to expose the filtered evidence, the people who did read the Sequences should admit it openly too. And because it seems that we have “Sequences as an attire” on this website, it is necessary to make it rather explicit.
Also for rationalists it would be silly to recommend to everyone reading the Sequences, if we were not really doing it. We should either read them, or stop suggesting everyone to read them. So this post is saying that some people are actually reading the Sequences, therefore suggesting to read them is not a shorthand to ‘fuck you’, but is means seriously.
If you indicate your disagreement with the local belief clusters without at least using their jargon, it used to be common for someone to helpfully suggest that “you should try reading the sequences” before attempting to talk to them. The “sequences” [contain] over a hundred and fifty 2,000-3,000-word blog posts. That’s [...] around a million words [...] With a few million more words of often-relevant comments. For comparison, the Lord Of The Rings trilogy is 473,000 words. As such, “You should try reading the sequences” is LessWrong for “fuck you.” This seems to have stopped since it was called to their attention.
I think that people should read the Sequences, and I mean it, literally. (I suggest skipping the comments below the articles. Sometimes they are interesting, but their signal-to-noise ratio is much lower.) If you have already decided to spend a lot of your time on LW, this will prevent you from discussing the same mistakes again and again and again, so in a long term it saves your time. -- Fellow procrastinators, if you have already read 300 LW posts, or 50 posts with all comments, then you have already read the same amount of text as the Sequences!
FWIW, when I read them, I often found the comment threads valuable as well. Admittedly, that might relate to the fact that I read them chronologically, which allowed me to see how the community’s thoughts were evolving and influencing the flow of posts.
There’s such a thing as a false dissent effect. (In fact I think it’s mentioned in the Sequences, although not by that name. Right now I’m too lazy to go find it.) If only those who disagree with some part or another of the Sequences post on the subject, we will get the apparent effect that “Nobody takes Yudkowsky seriously—not even his own cultists!” This in spite of the fact that everyone here (I assume) agrees with some part of the Sequences, perhaps as much as 80%. Our differences are in which 20% we disagree with. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making that clear.
For myself, I agree that MWI seems obvious in retrospect, that morality is defined by the algorithm of human thought (whatever it is), and that building programs whose output affects anything but computer screens without understanding all the details of the output is a Bad Idea.
To counter the effect it would be enough if those who agree with a criticised position supported it by pointing out the errors in the arguments of the critics, or offering better counterarguments themselves. Being silent when a belief is being disputed only to declare allegiance to it and leave the conversation later seems to be the wrong approach.
I was waiting for someone to make this accusation. The only thing missing is the part where I only agree with Yudkowsky because he’s high status and I wish to affiliate with him!
I know that I have observed and corrected a pattern like that in my thinking in the past. Studying biases is useless if you don’t adjust your own thinking at times you identify a bias that may be affecting it.
I think your prior for the comment you describe being true should be very high, and I’d like to know what additional evidence you had that brought that probability down. You’ve mentioned in the past that the high status tone of the sequences caught your attention and appealed to you. Isn’t it possible that you are flawed? I know I am.
Actually, I think what Jack said (that this post is signaling, but nothing else about his comment) is true, and my reply is also quite possibly true. But I don’t know how I should act differently in accordance with the possibility. It’s a case of epistemic luck if it is true. (As an aside, I think this is Alicorn’s best article on this website by leaps and bounds; I recommend it, &c.)
You’ve mentioned in the past that the high status tone of the sequences caught your attention and appealed to you.
What accusation? I’m just describing your post and asking questions about it.
Edit: I mean, obviously I have a point of view. But it’s not like it was much of a stretch to say what I did. I just paraphrased. How is my characterization of your post flawed?
I’m pretty sad a post that consists entirely of tribal signaling has been voted up like this. This post is literally asking people to publicly endorse the Sequences because they’re somehow under-attack (by whom?!) and no one agrees with them any more. Because some of us think having more smart people who disagree with us would improve Less Wrong? I find glib notions of a “singularity religion” obnoxious but what exactly is the point of asking people here to announce their allegiance to the site founder’s collection of blog posts?
To me it seems more like a spreading attitude of—“The Sequences are not that much important. Honestly, almost nobody reads all of them; they are just too long (and their value does not correspond to their length). Telling someone to ‘read the Sequences’ is just a polite way to say ‘fuck you’; obviously nobody could mean that literally.”
I have read most of the Sequences. In my opinion it is material really worth reading; not only better than 99% of internet, but if it became a book, it would be also better than 99% of books. (Making it a book would be a significant improvement, because there would be an unambiguous ordering of the chapters.) It contains a lot of information, and the information makes sense. And unlike many interesting books, it is not “repeating the basic idea over and over, using different words, adding a few details”. It talks about truth, then about mind, then about biases, then about language, then about quantum physics, etc. For me reading the Sequences was very much worth my time, and I would honestly recommend it to everyone interested in these topics.
What is then wrong with the attitude described above? New members, who didn’t read the Sequences yet, are making a decision whether reading the Sequences is worth their time, or whether the information can be learned as a side effect or reading LW forum. As a social species, we often make our decision by what other people are doing. So if it seems that nobody is reading the Sequences, why should I? This is why it is useful that someone makes a public announcement of “I have read the Sequences and it was worth it”. It needs to be said explicitly, because many people who didn’t read the Sequences are saying that explicitly. -- This is not an attack on people who don’t read the Sequences and admit it openly. Speaking the truth is the right thing to do. But if we don’t want to expose the filtered evidence, the people who did read the Sequences should admit it openly too. And because it seems that we have “Sequences as an attire” on this website, it is necessary to make it rather explicit.
Also for rationalists it would be silly to recommend to everyone reading the Sequences, if we were not really doing it. We should either read them, or stop suggesting everyone to read them. So this post is saying that some people are actually reading the Sequences, therefore suggesting to read them is not a shorthand to ‘fuck you’, but is means seriously.
Related, from another website:
I think that people should read the Sequences, and I mean it, literally. (I suggest skipping the comments below the articles. Sometimes they are interesting, but their signal-to-noise ratio is much lower.) If you have already decided to spend a lot of your time on LW, this will prevent you from discussing the same mistakes again and again and again, so in a long term it saves your time. -- Fellow procrastinators, if you have already read 300 LW posts, or 50 posts with all comments, then you have already read the same amount of text as the Sequences!
FWIW, when I read them, I often found the comment threads valuable as well. Admittedly, that might relate to the fact that I read them chronologically, which allowed me to see how the community’s thoughts were evolving and influencing the flow of posts.
There’s such a thing as a false dissent effect. (In fact I think it’s mentioned in the Sequences, although not by that name. Right now I’m too lazy to go find it.) If only those who disagree with some part or another of the Sequences post on the subject, we will get the apparent effect that “Nobody takes Yudkowsky seriously—not even his own cultists!” This in spite of the fact that everyone here (I assume) agrees with some part of the Sequences, perhaps as much as 80%. Our differences are in which 20% we disagree with. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making that clear.
For myself, I agree that MWI seems obvious in retrospect, that morality is defined by the algorithm of human thought (whatever it is), and that building programs whose output affects anything but computer screens without understanding all the details of the output is a Bad Idea.
To counter the effect it would be enough if those who agree with a criticised position supported it by pointing out the errors in the arguments of the critics, or offering better counterarguments themselves. Being silent when a belief is being disputed only to declare allegiance to it and leave the conversation later seems to be the wrong approach.
I was waiting for someone to make this accusation. The only thing missing is the part where I only agree with Yudkowsky because he’s high status and I wish to affiliate with him!
I know that I have observed and corrected a pattern like that in my thinking in the past. Studying biases is useless if you don’t adjust your own thinking at times you identify a bias that may be affecting it.
I think your prior for the comment you describe being true should be very high, and I’d like to know what additional evidence you had that brought that probability down. You’ve mentioned in the past that the high status tone of the sequences caught your attention and appealed to you. Isn’t it possible that you are flawed? I know I am.
Actually, I think what Jack said (that this post is signaling, but nothing else about his comment) is true, and my reply is also quite possibly true. But I don’t know how I should act differently in accordance with the possibility. It’s a case of epistemic luck if it is true. (As an aside, I think this is Alicorn’s best article on this website by leaps and bounds; I recommend it, &c.)
What?
What accusation? I’m just describing your post and asking questions about it.
Edit: I mean, obviously I have a point of view. But it’s not like it was much of a stretch to say what I did. I just paraphrased. How is my characterization of your post flawed?