I’m not blaming you for this because there isn’t another option but linking new users to the entirety of the sequences is, like, the most ridiculous habit we have here. Imagine you’ve never been here. You sign up because you read something clever someone wrote about groupthink. Then someone suggests you check out a list of some 600+ blog posts covering a tremendous variety of seemingly unrelated topics which the user may already know more about than Eliezer or lack even the basic background knowledge necessary for comprehension. I also doubt that the sequences are even the 600 whatever best/most important/most helpful introduction to what is going on here. Sure, some new users will be enthralled by the Sequences or parts of them but I have trouble imagining a worse gateway than that giant list with subsection upon subsection.
It’s made worse because the first major topic in the sequences is Bayesian probability. It’s important, sure, but most people find it really boring. I don’t have a better alternative reading order though, I wouldn’t recommend my mishmashed and nearly random flow through the sequences to others. I’m hoping that Eliezer isn’t planning on editing his rationality book entirely by himself and that a professional editor can turn it into something with more intuitive readability and flow that could serve as a better introduction to this site than the well intentioned advice of “read the sequences.”
For now, at least for people that like sci-fi, I think “go read Three Worlds Collide” is better advice than “go read the sequences”.
I’m not blaming you for this because there isn’t another option but linking new users to the entirety of the sequences is, like, the most ridiculous habit we have here. Imagine you’ve never been here. You sign up because you read something clever someone wrote about groupthink. Then someone suggests you check out a list of some 600+ blog posts covering a tremendous variety of seemingly unrelated topics which the user may already know more about than Eliezer or lack even the basic background knowledge necessary for comprehension. I also doubt that the sequences are even the 600 whatever best/most important/most helpful introduction to what is going on here. Sure, some new users will be enthralled by the Sequences or parts of them but I have trouble imagining a worse gateway than that giant list with subsection upon subsection.
It’s made worse because the first major topic in the sequences is Bayesian probability. It’s important, sure, but most people find it really boring. I don’t have a better alternative reading order though, I wouldn’t recommend my mishmashed and nearly random flow through the sequences to others. I’m hoping that Eliezer isn’t planning on editing his rationality book entirely by himself and that a professional editor can turn it into something with more intuitive readability and flow that could serve as a better introduction to this site than the well intentioned advice of “read the sequences.”
For now, at least for people that like sci-fi, I think “go read Three Worlds Collide” is better advice than “go read the sequences”.