I got the girl next door into rationality by recommending the Harry Potter fanfiction and bragging about how awesome interning at the Singularity Institute is (she’d already heard of them via writing a school paper on transhumanism). That said, she already had a very strong interest in quantum mechanics and knowledge generally and it still took me a few months to actually get her to the point where she wanted to read Less Wrong. She’s working her way through the sequences now, but I was really surprised at how difficult it was to get someone so knowledge-hungry to read a single LW post.
She’s working her way through the sequences now, but I was really surprised at how difficult it was to get someone so knowledge-hungry to read a single LW post.
What was the difficulty? Was she just skeptical that it would be worth her time? Or did she expect that they weren’t the sort of thing that she would enjoy reading for some reason?
It took a few months for me to start reading LW and sequences after I first read some random texts here. Not that I didn’t like it, and I’d like to think of myself as knowledge-hungry, and I had entire time this goal to start reading more, but still… Dunno. Learning shock, maybe? Humans, at least some, don’t really learn all that fast. Grasping even simple things takes ridiculous amounts of time, and I feel that inferential distance between LW and thought patterns of ordinary nerd is big enough to warrant few months of thinking time.
But dunno. This topic could almost be discussed more, I remember vividly observing the huge inferential gap when I first came here, but now I can’t remember how did I think back then.
In general, reading an interesting article on a site you’ve been linked to and then leaving the site without reading more seems to be the default behavior for humans, unless the article in question has particularly interesting links. Since most sites have a lot of variance in the quality of the articles, this is pretty reasonable behavior: only reading a site when somebody bothers to link to it will increase the odds of you not wasting your time. It often takes several links to the same site before you get interested enough to actually start reading it.
I’m not really sure. She said she was afraid there would be too many concepts she hadn’t previously encountered and thus would be forced to start a Wikipedia tab explosion if she was to get anything out of it. It doesn’t help that the first thing she looked at was a post in the middle of the quantum physics sequence, which I imagine would be rather intimidating (much more so than anything else on LW, I think). This led her to a false sense of how difficult this whole rationality thing is.
Was that her real reason? (theres a nice article on that one)
I surely have my share of unread books lying around as does everybody else. E.T. Jaynes remains half read so far, as does lots of stuff about groups effects and psychology.
This one? I think that was her real reason, considering that once she was introduced to a less intimidating version of LW (the Harry Potter fanfic) she quickly moved to reading the LW sequences.
I sometimes wonder why so many Christians never read the Bible. (Not sure if the same holds true for other religions with a written canon.)
Maybe its a similar reason. I guess whoever finds a way around it could become a really great teacher, and/or sell piles of books.
I sometimes wonder why so many Christians never read the Bible. (Not sure if the same holds true for other religions with a written canon.)
I suspect that a lot of Christians don’t read the Bible as a cognitive defense mechanism since a cursory reading shows that there’s a lot of material (especially in the Old Testament) that is at odds with modern morality. There are a lot of religious Jews who have not read much of the Bible or if they have, have only read it through the lens of commentary. I’m more familiar with Judaism than with Christianity in detail, and my impression is that for Jews there are so many different approaches and different motivations that almost anything I can say is going to be an overgeneralization. That suggests that the same is happening in regards to Christians reading their scriptures and I just don’t have enough data to recognize that.
I suspect that a lot of Christians don’t read the Bible as a cognitive defense mechanism since a cursory reading shows that there’s a lot of material (especially in the Old Testament) that is at odds with modern morality.
The history is more complex. For many centuries, lay Christians weren’t supposed to read the Bible, and in at least one time and place, translating the Bible into English was deemed heretical. That changed with the Reformation, one of the pillars of which was the view that the Bible should be read by all, as the sole basis of religion. And it was (or listened to, by the unlettered).
If (cite?) those who call themselves Christians do not nowadays read the Bible, it is not clear why the alleged cognitive hazard did not apply, say, in Victorian times. Perhaps they are merely more lacklustre about their religion.
If (cite?) those who call themselves Christians do not nowadays read the Bible, it is not clear why the alleged cognitive hazard did not apply, say, in Victorian times. Perhaps they are merely more lacklustre about their religion.
I think a lot of intelligent Christians don’t read the Bible for the same reason that a lot of intelligent atheists don’t try to become very conversant in modern physics. The Christians think that they are lucky enough to live in a world with a nice division of labor in place. They can devote their time to other things because people they trust have chosen to read the Bible, and the readers will make sure that the other Christians know about anything really important.
That actually sort of makes sense. If Christians see Bible study as analogous to advanced research, what they do is equivalent to an intelligent atheist reading popular books on physics, going to lectures, and taking a class, but not getting a Ph.D.
There’s also a huge difference between (1) sitting down and reading the whole thing straight through in a few sittings and (2) studying the text with teachers and commentary over the course of a year.
(1) prompts a focus on the literary aspects of the Bible, which are often subversive vis-a-vis mainstream Orthodox culture, and allows you to notice dominant themes and glaring inconsistencies.
(2) carefully pushes aside inconsistencies while giving your community ample time to help you bury any contrarian impulses you inadvertently develop.
I’d strongly guess not. I suspect that most have read all of the Torah, but I’d be surprised if most have read all of Nach. Most Orthodox Jews aren’t going to read stuff there unless it is in that weeks haftorah or is associated with some event (such as one of the Megillot). That leaves most of Kings and Chronicles unread as well as many of the later prophets such as Daniel and much of Ezra.
A lot of Christians that do read the bible treat anything bad as allegory anyway. In fact, they treat pretty much the whole thing as allegory from what I can tell. Which, of course, makes it very difficult to falsify.
If there was a book where the creator of the universe put down all his wisdom I would surely read it. (Or the commented version, or the watered down popular version) More so if all of society claims that the book does so, and it was widely available.
Not doing so would mean that the respective religious people already know on a unconscious level that something fishy is going on.
I would like to understand what is going on here.
Regarding the more mundane reading material: sometimes material gets forgotten, does not seem /that/ important. I can also imagine that outside pressure reduces the desire to read something.
Then i noticed a strong inability to accurately expect improvements in my ability to think, even with respect to sources that have proven their ability to do so many times over.
And then their are people for whom thinking does not matter in the first place....
I got the girl next door into rationality by recommending the Harry Potter fanfiction and bragging about how awesome interning at the Singularity Institute is (she’d already heard of them via writing a school paper on transhumanism). That said, she already had a very strong interest in quantum mechanics and knowledge generally and it still took me a few months to actually get her to the point where she wanted to read Less Wrong. She’s working her way through the sequences now, but I was really surprised at how difficult it was to get someone so knowledge-hungry to read a single LW post.
What was the difficulty? Was she just skeptical that it would be worth her time? Or did she expect that they weren’t the sort of thing that she would enjoy reading for some reason?
It took a few months for me to start reading LW and sequences after I first read some random texts here. Not that I didn’t like it, and I’d like to think of myself as knowledge-hungry, and I had entire time this goal to start reading more, but still… Dunno. Learning shock, maybe? Humans, at least some, don’t really learn all that fast. Grasping even simple things takes ridiculous amounts of time, and I feel that inferential distance between LW and thought patterns of ordinary nerd is big enough to warrant few months of thinking time.
But dunno. This topic could almost be discussed more, I remember vividly observing the huge inferential gap when I first came here, but now I can’t remember how did I think back then.
In general, reading an interesting article on a site you’ve been linked to and then leaving the site without reading more seems to be the default behavior for humans, unless the article in question has particularly interesting links. Since most sites have a lot of variance in the quality of the articles, this is pretty reasonable behavior: only reading a site when somebody bothers to link to it will increase the odds of you not wasting your time. It often takes several links to the same site before you get interested enough to actually start reading it.
I was really interested even back then. Name of this site was enough to cause that.
I’m not really sure. She said she was afraid there would be too many concepts she hadn’t previously encountered and thus would be forced to start a Wikipedia tab explosion if she was to get anything out of it. It doesn’t help that the first thing she looked at was a post in the middle of the quantum physics sequence, which I imagine would be rather intimidating (much more so than anything else on LW, I think). This led her to a false sense of how difficult this whole rationality thing is.
Was that her real reason? (theres a nice article on that one) I surely have my share of unread books lying around as does everybody else. E.T. Jaynes remains half read so far, as does lots of stuff about groups effects and psychology.
This one? I think that was her real reason, considering that once she was introduced to a less intimidating version of LW (the Harry Potter fanfic) she quickly moved to reading the LW sequences.
I sometimes wonder why so many Christians never read the Bible. (Not sure if the same holds true for other religions with a written canon.) Maybe its a similar reason. I guess whoever finds a way around it could become a really great teacher, and/or sell piles of books.
I suspect that a lot of Christians don’t read the Bible as a cognitive defense mechanism since a cursory reading shows that there’s a lot of material (especially in the Old Testament) that is at odds with modern morality. There are a lot of religious Jews who have not read much of the Bible or if they have, have only read it through the lens of commentary. I’m more familiar with Judaism than with Christianity in detail, and my impression is that for Jews there are so many different approaches and different motivations that almost anything I can say is going to be an overgeneralization. That suggests that the same is happening in regards to Christians reading their scriptures and I just don’t have enough data to recognize that.
The history is more complex. For many centuries, lay Christians weren’t supposed to read the Bible, and in at least one time and place, translating the Bible into English was deemed heretical. That changed with the Reformation, one of the pillars of which was the view that the Bible should be read by all, as the sole basis of religion. And it was (or listened to, by the unlettered).
If (cite?) those who call themselves Christians do not nowadays read the Bible, it is not clear why the alleged cognitive hazard did not apply, say, in Victorian times. Perhaps they are merely more lacklustre about their religion.
I think a lot of intelligent Christians don’t read the Bible for the same reason that a lot of intelligent atheists don’t try to become very conversant in modern physics. The Christians think that they are lucky enough to live in a world with a nice division of labor in place. They can devote their time to other things because people they trust have chosen to read the Bible, and the readers will make sure that the other Christians know about anything really important.
That actually sort of makes sense. If Christians see Bible study as analogous to advanced research, what they do is equivalent to an intelligent atheist reading popular books on physics, going to lectures, and taking a class, but not getting a Ph.D.
I’d guess most adult Orthodox Jews have read the whole Old Testament.
There’s also a huge difference between (1) sitting down and reading the whole thing straight through in a few sittings and (2) studying the text with teachers and commentary over the course of a year.
(1) prompts a focus on the literary aspects of the Bible, which are often subversive vis-a-vis mainstream Orthodox culture, and allows you to notice dominant themes and glaring inconsistencies.
(2) carefully pushes aside inconsistencies while giving your community ample time to help you bury any contrarian impulses you inadvertently develop.
I’d strongly guess not. I suspect that most have read all of the Torah, but I’d be surprised if most have read all of Nach. Most Orthodox Jews aren’t going to read stuff there unless it is in that weeks haftorah or is associated with some event (such as one of the Megillot). That leaves most of Kings and Chronicles unread as well as many of the later prophets such as Daniel and much of Ezra.
Was trying to say Pentateuch, not Nach.
Then no disagreement. Note that “Old Testament” usually refers to the entire of Tanach (modulo reordering).
A lot of Christians that do read the bible treat anything bad as allegory anyway. In fact, they treat pretty much the whole thing as allegory from what I can tell. Which, of course, makes it very difficult to falsify.
If there was a book where the creator of the universe put down all his wisdom I would surely read it. (Or the commented version, or the watered down popular version) More so if all of society claims that the book does so, and it was widely available. Not doing so would mean that the respective religious people already know on a unconscious level that something fishy is going on. I would like to understand what is going on here.
Regarding the more mundane reading material: sometimes material gets forgotten, does not seem /that/ important. I can also imagine that outside pressure reduces the desire to read something. Then i noticed a strong inability to accurately expect improvements in my ability to think, even with respect to sources that have proven their ability to do so many times over. And then their are people for whom thinking does not matter in the first place....
Maybe because the Bible is boring.
Yep!