I read somewhere on this site that Thinking and Deciding is pretty much the sequences in book form.
So, my review of Thinking and Deciding claims that T&D is a good introduction to rationality. One of the comments there is a link to Eliezer’s comment that Good and Real is basically the Sequences in book form.
The two are about different topics- T&D is about the meat of rationality (what is thinking, biases, hypothesis generation and testing, values, decisionmaking under certainty and uncertainty), whereas G&R is about the philosophy of reductionism, focusing on various paradoxes, like Newcomb’s Problem. For reasons that I have difficulty articulating, I found G&R painful to read, but I appear to be atypical in that reaction. (I liked the Sequences, and so if you disliked the Sequences my pain might be a recommendation for G&R!)
A primary value of the Sequences, in my opinion, is the resulting philosophical foundation- many people come away from the Sequences with the feeling that their views haven’t changed significantly, but that they have been clarified significantly- which I don’t think one gets from T&D (whereas I do think that T&D is much more effective at training executive-nature / facility with decision-making than the Sequences).
So, my review of Thinking and Deciding claims that T&D is a good introduction to rationality. One of the comments there is a link to Eliezer’s comment that Good and Real is basically the Sequences in book form.
The two are about different topics- T&D is about the meat of rationality (what is thinking, biases, hypothesis generation and testing, values, decisionmaking under certainty and uncertainty), whereas G&R is about the philosophy of reductionism, focusing on various paradoxes, like Newcomb’s Problem. For reasons that I have difficulty articulating, I found G&R painful to read, but I appear to be atypical in that reaction. (I liked the Sequences, and so if you disliked the Sequences my pain might be a recommendation for G&R!)
A primary value of the Sequences, in my opinion, is the resulting philosophical foundation- many people come away from the Sequences with the feeling that their views haven’t changed significantly, but that they have been clarified significantly- which I don’t think one gets from T&D (whereas I do think that T&D is much more effective at training executive-nature / facility with decision-making than the Sequences).
Thanks. I already had Good & Real on my reading list, but based on this I think I’ll bump it up to higher priority.