Re: incremental implementability—if we ever do organise LessWrong meetups, we should organise rationalist book clubs. How many people here have actually read Judgement under Uncertainty? I confess I never got around to it, though I meant to, but knowing fellow readers might motivate me.
And another thing, when are we going to get a LessWrong wiki? The glut of information here and on OB is unmanageable and we ought to force some kind of order on it—a rationalist curriculum or cheat sheet or something. Having “previously in series” at the top of new posts leads to an impenetrable expanding tree of long blog posts, discouraging new members and confusing lazy and forgetful individuals such as myself.
It would definitely be a great addition to the toolkit. Main benefits would be:
1) More shared experiences would probably help strengthen community
2) More shared knowledge to build on in LW/OC posts
3) Difficult books become less intimidating when you know you can ask others for elucidations
4) Building an archive of discussions about certain books could be tremendously helpful to newcomers (wouldn’t you have liked to find such an archive a few years ago?)
+1 point for stating the obvious, yet not yet done.
I also strongly recommend having a book club.
I love HPMoR, but it’s definitely not the only work of fiction worth discussing.
So, everyone,
LET’S DO IT!
edit: I meant online, not just in real life. It should be a section on this site, perhaps next to discussion and main?
I think this is a great idea. For a lot of people involvement in Less Wrong is somewhat sporadic and committing to reading long-form non-fiction is implausible. By the third chapter no one is left. Getting used to discussing journal articles or standalone chapters might make tackling longer texts easier, too.
Does any have things they’d like to read, say, between 30 and 100 pages? What about Scott Aaronson’s “Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity?”
HPMoR is already more than a thousand pages.
I don’t think we are being fair to other works.
The problem here is that HPMoR is a fanfic, while books are books. Fanfics are read chapters at a time, yet books are read in their entirety.
Chapter by chapter discussions of FFs make sense.
However, for books they become tiresome. Think about all the people that want to read the next chapter already.
Why not just have one thread per book, where people can discuss anything they want? Chapters, quotes, themes, etc?
I think people should just live through it and wait until they finish the book to ask.
In my own experience, I remember having questions about a specific line/chapter and then by the end I realize what the answer to the question was, or I realized the question was insignificant.
It would be better if people wrote notes of things to discuss while reading the book and at the end they posted what they wanted to talk about. An added benefit of this is self quality control.
I think that at the moment a wiki would be trouble. NPOV and the ultimate power of Jimbo are what make Wikipedia work. Other wikis work because what they discuss is not that contentious.
Whoa now. Wikis aren’t just about compiling neutral encyclopedia articles or FAQs or things of that nature. Remember that the original wiki was all about contentious (programming) discussions & ideas.
Re: incremental implementability—if we ever do organise LessWrong meetups, we should organise rationalist book clubs. How many people here have actually read Judgement under Uncertainty? I confess I never got around to it, though I meant to, but knowing fellow readers might motivate me.
And another thing, when are we going to get a LessWrong wiki? The glut of information here and on OB is unmanageable and we ought to force some kind of order on it—a rationalist curriculum or cheat sheet or something. Having “previously in series” at the top of new posts leads to an impenetrable expanding tree of long blog posts, discouraging new members and confusing lazy and forgetful individuals such as myself.
++ Book club
It would definitely be a great addition to the toolkit. Main benefits would be:
1) More shared experiences would probably help strengthen community
2) More shared knowledge to build on in LW/OC posts
3) Difficult books become less intimidating when you know you can ask others for elucidations
4) Building an archive of discussions about certain books could be tremendously helpful to newcomers (wouldn’t you have liked to find such an archive a few years ago?)
+1 point for stating the obvious, yet not yet done. I also strongly recommend having a book club. I love HPMoR, but it’s definitely not the only work of fiction worth discussing. So, everyone, LET’S DO IT!
edit: I meant online, not just in real life. It should be a section on this site, perhaps next to discussion and main?
How about a pdf club for shorter things?
I think this is a great idea. For a lot of people involvement in Less Wrong is somewhat sporadic and committing to reading long-form non-fiction is implausible. By the third chapter no one is left. Getting used to discussing journal articles or standalone chapters might make tackling longer texts easier, too.
Does any have things they’d like to read, say, between 30 and 100 pages? What about Scott Aaronson’s “Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity?”
HPMoR is already more than a thousand pages. I don’t think we are being fair to other works.
The problem here is that HPMoR is a fanfic, while books are books. Fanfics are read chapters at a time, yet books are read in their entirety.
Chapter by chapter discussions of FFs make sense. However, for books they become tiresome. Think about all the people that want to read the next chapter already.
Why not just have one thread per book, where people can discuss anything they want? Chapters, quotes, themes, etc?
We should at least be able to specify minimum chapter requirements, so we can discuss without spoiler disclaimers everywhere.
I think people should just live through it and wait until they finish the book to ask. In my own experience, I remember having questions about a specific line/chapter and then by the end I realize what the answer to the question was, or I realized the question was insignificant. It would be better if people wrote notes of things to discuss while reading the book and at the end they posted what they wanted to talk about. An added benefit of this is self quality control.
Why not take over the SL4 wiki? It’s not like they’re using it.
SL4.org is unreliable, if we’re going to have a wiki it should be hosted on-site.
I think that at the moment a wiki would be trouble. NPOV and the ultimate power of Jimbo are what make Wikipedia work. Other wikis work because what they discuss is not that contentious.
Whoa now. Wikis aren’t just about compiling neutral encyclopedia articles or FAQs or things of that nature. Remember that the original wiki was all about contentious (programming) discussions & ideas.
Agreed. TVTropes works very well without any but the lightest semblance of neutrality.
Warning, though: It is horrendously addictive
Ironically enough, I just clicked through to see what was behind “horrendously addictive” and lost half an hour.
JUST HALF AN HOUR!?
I don’t think a wiki as such would help much, what’s really needed is simply a well compiled index.
I v