If you mouse over those sections on the application, messages should be appearing on the right saying “Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t read much of Less Wrong, we have other ways of gauging your knowledge during the interview” and “Again, don’t be discouraged if these are unfamiliar”. If I had put it on the application, it would be to gather information about the applicant’s devotion to research on the subject of rationality, not their actual knowledge (reading does not imply understanding).
Still, the current best of those ideas that have been actively discussed for thousands of years is what went into the creation of the sequences and (hopefully, I haven’t read much of them) the foundation of the SIAI literature. They did that on purpose; it would have been rather silly for them not to.
If you mouse over those sections on the application, messages should be appearing on the right saying “Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t read much of Less Wrong, we have other ways of gauging your knowledge during the interview” and “Again, don’t be discouraged if these are unfamiliar”. If I had put it on the application, it would be to gather information about the applicant’s devotion to research on the subject of rationality, not their actual knowledge (reading does not imply understanding).
Still, the current best of those ideas that have been actively discussed for thousands of years is what went into the creation of the sequences and (hopefully, I haven’t read much of them) the foundation of the SIAI literature. They did that on purpose; it would have been rather silly for them not to.