daniel dennett on, among other things, the problems with treating all suffering as interchangeable https://archive.vn/5SLEy
on reading comprehension limits: https://catalog.shepherd.edu/mime/med… -- while a 50th percentile student reads (with retention) at 250wpm and a 75th at 500wpm for “general expository reading (e.g. news)”, this same group reads at a 50th percentile of 149wpm and a 75th percentile of 170wpm for “advanced scientific and/or technical material”. assuming a gaussian distribution, the distance between 50th percentile and 75th percentile is 2/3s an SD—so with an SD of ~31.5, reading said material at 306.5WPM is 5SD from the mean, or about 1/3.5 million. the average audible narration rate is 155wpm, so this severely puts into question those who say they’re 2xing or even 1.75xing advanced audiobooks/lectures.
Duplicating the first comment (@alfredmacdonald’s proposed alternative)
A READING LIST FOR RATIONALITY THAT IS NOT LESSWRONG / RENDERS THE SEQUENCES SUPERFLUOUS
objection: “but I learned a lot about rationality through lesswrong”
here is another fantastic handbook of rationality, which is a wonderfully integrated work spanning psychology, philosophy, law, and other fields with 806 pages of content. https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Rationality-Markus-Knauff/dp/0262045079 (it is quite expensive—no one will blame you if you pirate it from libgen.)
you will learn more through these texts than through the LessWrong Sequences. as mentioned, many of these are expensive, and no one will blame you if you need to pirate/libgen them. many or maybe even most of these you will need to reread some of these texts, perhaps multiple times.
“but I’d rather have a communi - ” yes, exactly. hence the thesis of a video I made: lesswrong is primarily nerds who want a hangout group/subculture, rather than a means of learning rationality, and this disparity between claimed purpose and actual purpose produces most of the objections people have and many of my objections in my video, and why I have created this alternate reading list.
I haven’t listened to the video yet. (It’s very long, so I put it on my watch-later list.) Nor have I finished Eliezer’s Sequences (I’m on “A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation.”) However, I looked at the above summaries to decide whether it would be worth listening to the video.
Potential Weaknesses
None of the alternative books say anything about statistics. A rough intro to Bayesian statistics is an essential part of the Sequences. Without this, you have not made them superfluous.
A rough understanding of Bayesian statistics is a valuable tool.
Anecdote: I took courses in informal logic when I was a teenager and was aware of cognitive biases. However, the a-ha moment that took me out of the religion of my childhood was to ask whether a particular theodicy was probable. This opened the way to ask whether some of my other beliefs were probable (not possible, as I’d done before). Within an hour of asking the first question, I was an atheist. (Though it took me another year to “check my work” by meeting with the area pastors and elders.) I thought to ask it because I’d been studying statistics. So, for me, the statistical lens helped in the case where the other lenses failed to reveal my errors. I already knew a hoard of problems with the Bible, but the non-probabilistic approaches allowed me to deal with the evidence piece by piece. I could propose a fix for each one. For example, following Origen, I could say that Genesis 1 was an allegory. Then it didn’t count against the whole structure.
The above anecdote took place several years before I encountered LessWrong. I’m not saying that the Sequences/LessWrong helped me escape religion. I’m saying that Bayesian stats worked where other things failed, so it was useful to me, and you should not consider that you’ve replaced the sequences if you leave it out.
The promotion of the LSAT and legal reasoning seems out of place. Law is the opposite of truth-seeking. Lawyers create whatever arguments they can to serve their clients. A quick Google couldn’t dig up statistics, but I’d guess that more lawyers are theists than scientists.
For me, the LessWrong community is a place I can get better data and predictions than other news sources. I know only one person who is also on LessWrong. They live across an ocean from me, and we haven’t talked in 8 months. I don’t think hanging out and playing board games is a major draw. If this is the thesis, it is far from my personal experience.
Potential Strengths
The emphasis of the sequences on epistemic over instrumental rationality.
Other people in the LessWrong community have pointed this out. (I remember a sequence with the word “Hammer” in it that talks about instrumental rationality.)
The alternative reading list does not seem to address instrumental rationality
Treating suffering as interchangeable doesn’t always produce good outcomes. (Though I don’t know how to deal with this—if you can only take one course of action, you must reify everything into a space where you can compare options.)
Other
An alternative to piracy in the USA is to request books with the Interlibrary loan system. It is free in most places. Also, academic libraries in public universities frequently offer membership for a small fee ($10-$20 per month) or free to community members—especially students, so if you have a local university, you might ask them.
Duplicating the description
TimePoints
00:00 intro
0:53 most of the sequences aren’t about rationality; AI is not rationality
3:43 lesswrong and IQ mysticism
32:20 lesswrong and something-in-the-waterism
36:49 overtrusting of ingroups
39:35 vulnerability to believing people’s BS self-claims
47:35 norms aren’t sharp enough
54:41 weird cultlike privacy norms
56:46 realnaming as “doxxing”
58:28 no viable method for calling out rumors/misinformation if realnaming is ‘doxxing’
1:00:16 the strangeness and backwardness of LW-sphere privacy norms
1:04:07 EA: disregard for the homeless and refusal to do politics because it’s messy
1:10:16 EA: largely socially inept, does not understand how truly bad the SBF situation is
1:13:36 EA: treatment of utilitarianism and consciousness is simplistic
1:20:20 EA rigor: vitamin A charity example
1:23:39 extreme techno optimism and weak knowledge of human biology
1:25:24 exclusionary white nerd millennial culture
1:27:23 comfort class culture
1:30:25 pragmatics-agnosticism
1:33:13 shallow analysis of empirical topics
1:34:18 idiosyncrasies of communication, e.g. being extremely obtuse at the thesis level
1:39:50 epistemic rationality matters much more than instrumental rationality
1:43:00 the scene isn’t about rationality, it’s about hanging out and board games (which is fine, just don’t act like you’re doing anything important)
References
sample WAIS report https://www.pearsonassessments.com/co...
what is g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v...
childhood IQ vs. adult IQ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12887...
wonky attempts to measure IQ above 160 https://archive.vn/kFCY1
computer-based verbal memory test https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/verb...
typing speed / IQ https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED022127
simple choice reaction time https://www.psytoolkit.org/lessons/ex...
severity of 83 IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur7...
googleability of WAIS https://nda.nih.gov/data_structure.ht...
uses of WAIS in clinical care https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
drunk reaction time experiment https://imgur.com/a/IIZpTol
how g correlates with WAIS https://archive.vn/gyDcM
low murderer IQ https://archive.vn/SrenV
tom segura bit about the first 48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0l2l...
rarity of perfect LSAT scores (30 out of 100,000) https://archive.vn/KWAzf
limits on human reading speed (1) https://archive.vn/IVU8x
limits on human reading speed (2) https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-1...
kinobody fitness callout by philion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjytE...
summary of lesswrong drama (Jan-Mar. 2022) https://alfredmacdonald.medium.com/su...
leverage / geoff anders pseudo-cult https://archive.vn/BKvtM
the questionability of michael vassar and related organizations https://archive.vn/8A8QO
sharp vs soft culture https://archive.vn/VOpya
something-in-the-waterism https://alfredmacdonald.medium.com/so...
on the fakeness of many bayesian priors https://alfredmacdonald.substack.com/...
criticism of the “postrationalist” subculture and the problems created by pseudonyms and hyper-privacy norms https://alfredmacdonald.substack.com/...
proliferation of “technoyogi” woo in this culture due to lack of BS-calling norms https://alfredmacdonald.substack.com/...
questionability of the vitamin A charity I mentioned https://archive.vn/2AxlK
MIRI support from Open Philanthropy https://archive.vn/JW6WT
MIRI publication record https://archive.vn/9hIhT
MIRI staff https://archive.vn/hJeuT
MIRI budget, 50% of which is spent on research personnel https://archive.vn/z6bvz
benefits of sharp culture (or at least a mean robot boss) https://archive.vn/onIfM
daniel dennett on, among other things, the problems with treating all suffering as interchangeable https://archive.vn/5SLEy
on reading comprehension limits: https://catalog.shepherd.edu/mime/med… -- while a 50th percentile student reads (with retention) at 250wpm and a 75th at 500wpm for “general expository reading (e.g. news)”, this same group reads at a 50th percentile of 149wpm and a 75th percentile of 170wpm for “advanced scientific and/or technical material”. assuming a gaussian distribution, the distance between 50th percentile and 75th percentile is 2/3s an SD—so with an SD of ~31.5, reading said material at 306.5WPM is 5SD from the mean, or about 1/3.5 million. the average audible narration rate is 155wpm, so this severely puts into question those who say they’re 2xing or even 1.75xing advanced audiobooks/lectures.
Duplicating the first comment (@alfredmacdonald’s proposed alternative)
A READING LIST FOR RATIONALITY THAT IS NOT LESSWRONG / RENDERS THE SEQUENCES SUPERFLUOUS
objection: “but I learned a lot about rationality through lesswrong”
response: maybe, but probably inadequately.
while unorthodox, I usually suggest this above everything else: the PowerScore Logical Reasoning Bible, while meant as LSAT prep, is the best test of plain-language reasoning that I am aware of. the kinds of questions you are meant to do will humble many of you. https://www.amazon.com/PowerScore-LSAT-Logical-Reasoning-Bible/dp/0991299221 and you can take a 10-question section of practice questions at https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/test-format/logical-reasoning/logical-reasoning-sample-questions — many of you will not get every question right, in which case there is room to sharpen your ability and powerscore’s book helps do that.
https://www.amazon.com/Cengage-Advantage-Books-Understanding-Introduction/dp/1285197364 in my view, the best book on argumentation that exists; worth reading either alongside PowerScore’s book, or directly after it.
https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-What-Seems-Scarce-Matters/dp/B08X4X4SQ4 pinker’s “rationality” is an excellent next step after learning how to reason through the previous two texts, since you will establish what rationality actually is.
https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Reasoning-Handbooks-Psychology/dp/0521531012 this is a reference text, meaning it’s not meant to be read front-to-back. it’s one of the most comprehensive of its kind.
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-History-Logic-Valued-Nonmonotonic/dp/044460359X — this is both prohibitively and ludicrously expensive, so you will probably need to pirate it. however, this history of logic covers many useful concepts.
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555 this is a standard text that established “irrationality” as a mainstream academic concept. despite being a psychologist, some of kahneman’s work won him the nobel prize in economics in 2002, shared with vernon smith.
https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-audiobook/dp/B0014EAHNQ this is another widely-read text that expands on the mainstream concept of irrationality.
https://www.amazon.com/BIASES-HEURISTICS-Collection-Heuristics-Everything/dp/1078432317 it is exactly what it says: a list of about 100 cognitive biases. many of these biases are worth rereading and/or flashcarding. there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
https://www.amazon.com/Informal-Logical-Fallacies-Brief-Guide/dp/0761854339 also exactly what it says, but with logical fallacies rather than biases. (a bias is an error in weight or proportion or emphasis; a fallacy is a mistake in reasoning itself.) there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
here is another fantastic handbook of rationality, which is a wonderfully integrated work spanning psychology, philosophy, law, and other fields with 806 pages of content. https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Rationality-Markus-Knauff/dp/0262045079 (it is quite expensive—no one will blame you if you pirate it from libgen.)
you will learn more through these texts than through the LessWrong Sequences. as mentioned, many of these are expensive, and no one will blame you if you need to pirate/libgen them. many or maybe even most of these you will need to reread some of these texts, perhaps multiple times.
“but I’d rather have a communi - ” yes, exactly. hence the thesis of a video I made: lesswrong is primarily nerds who want a hangout group/subculture, rather than a means of learning rationality, and this disparity between claimed purpose and actual purpose produces most of the objections people have and many of my objections in my video, and why I have created this alternate reading list.
I haven’t listened to the video yet. (It’s very long, so I put it on my watch-later list.) Nor have I finished Eliezer’s Sequences (I’m on “A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation.”) However, I looked at the above summaries to decide whether it would be worth listening to the video.
Potential Weaknesses
None of the alternative books say anything about statistics. A rough intro to Bayesian statistics is an essential part of the Sequences. Without this, you have not made them superfluous.
A rough understanding of Bayesian statistics is a valuable tool.
Anecdote: I took courses in informal logic when I was a teenager and was aware of cognitive biases. However, the a-ha moment that took me out of the religion of my childhood was to ask whether a particular theodicy was probable. This opened the way to ask whether some of my other beliefs were probable (not possible, as I’d done before). Within an hour of asking the first question, I was an atheist. (Though it took me another year to “check my work” by meeting with the area pastors and elders.) I thought to ask it because I’d been studying statistics. So, for me, the statistical lens helped in the case where the other lenses failed to reveal my errors. I already knew a hoard of problems with the Bible, but the non-probabilistic approaches allowed me to deal with the evidence piece by piece. I could propose a fix for each one. For example, following Origen, I could say that Genesis 1 was an allegory. Then it didn’t count against the whole structure.
The above anecdote took place several years before I encountered LessWrong. I’m not saying that the Sequences/LessWrong helped me escape religion. I’m saying that Bayesian stats worked where other things failed, so it was useful to me, and you should not consider that you’ve replaced the sequences if you leave it out.
Handbook of the History of Logic: The Many Valued and Nonmonotonic Turn in Logic is on the reading list. I haven’t read it, but the title gives me pause. Nonmonotonic logics are subtle and can be misapplied. I misapplied Zadeh’s possibilistic logic to help justify my theism.
The promotion of the LSAT and legal reasoning seems out of place. Law is the opposite of truth-seeking. Lawyers create whatever arguments they can to serve their clients. A quick Google couldn’t dig up statistics, but I’d guess that more lawyers are theists than scientists.
For me, the LessWrong community is a place I can get better data and predictions than other news sources. I know only one person who is also on LessWrong. They live across an ocean from me, and we haven’t talked in 8 months. I don’t think hanging out and playing board games is a major draw. If this is the thesis, it is far from my personal experience.
Potential Strengths
The emphasis of the sequences on epistemic over instrumental rationality.
Other people in the LessWrong community have pointed this out. (I remember a sequence with the word “Hammer” in it that talks about instrumental rationality.)
The alternative reading list does not seem to address instrumental rationality
Treating suffering as interchangeable doesn’t always produce good outcomes. (Though I don’t know how to deal with this—if you can only take one course of action, you must reify everything into a space where you can compare options.)
Other An alternative to piracy in the USA is to request books with the Interlibrary loan system. It is free in most places. Also, academic libraries in public universities frequently offer membership for a small fee ($10-$20 per month) or free to community members—especially students, so if you have a local university, you might ask them.