This is a great post, thanks! I want to vote it up 2^8 times.
Another good route for rationalist education is podcasts. To share some anecdata, I personally got into basic rationalism, and gave up my fairly vague and non-commital beliefs in ESP and various other forms of woo, after getting into The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.
I think it would be amazing if there were a Less Wrong-ish parallel to such a podcast, that focuses less on traditional skeptical topics like anti-woo and atheism (since there are already plenty of podcasts about those), and more on formal rationalism and abstract topics like fun theory and Bayesian reasoning.
Also, seconded on the notion of Khan Academy style videos. Those are just amazing; the fact that they’re drawn on the fly actually makes them easier to understand for me than pre-done PowerPoint-style slides. I think this is because I get a glimpse into the creator’s thought processes as they explain, and also it normalizes the amount of information delivered per unit of time down to a nice even stream, instead of sudden jumps at slide transitions. It also has the advantage of also reducing viewer expectations for shiny graphics.
I love this idea, though unfortunately doing a podcast requires a fair amount of work. I have lots of experience in doing a podcast, but I am way overburdened as it is. I do plan, however, to be doing some interviews on these subjects for my own podcast, and in fact Eliezer is an upcoming guest.
This is a great post, thanks! I want to vote it up 2^8 times.
Another good route for rationalist education is podcasts. To share some anecdata, I personally got into basic rationalism, and gave up my fairly vague and non-commital beliefs in ESP and various other forms of woo, after getting into The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.
I think it would be amazing if there were a Less Wrong-ish parallel to such a podcast, that focuses less on traditional skeptical topics like anti-woo and atheism (since there are already plenty of podcasts about those), and more on formal rationalism and abstract topics like fun theory and Bayesian reasoning.
Also, seconded on the notion of Khan Academy style videos. Those are just amazing; the fact that they’re drawn on the fly actually makes them easier to understand for me than pre-done PowerPoint-style slides. I think this is because I get a glimpse into the creator’s thought processes as they explain, and also it normalizes the amount of information delivered per unit of time down to a nice even stream, instead of sudden jumps at slide transitions. It also has the advantage of also reducing viewer expectations for shiny graphics.
I love this idea, though unfortunately doing a podcast requires a fair amount of work. I have lots of experience in doing a podcast, but I am way overburdened as it is. I do plan, however, to be doing some interviews on these subjects for my own podcast, and in fact Eliezer is an upcoming guest.