One simple improvement would be to add exercises at the end of articles whenever possible, and to encourage people to do them before or instead of reading the comments.
I’ve been collecting exercises (slowly) for years. Would love to contribute to a shared collection of exercises, ideally on a site that allows them to be tagged, rated, searched, and have people comment with their experiences.
I am skeptical that people reading fun shiny LW posts and encountering an exercise would actually then go do that exercise. Doing exercises is work!
The Center for Applied Rationality is currently collecting and developing rationality exercises and training people with them. They have not published a list of their exercises, but you can find a game they made here.
There was a string of decision theory and anthropics posts (including various dilemmas—sleeping beauty, counterfactual mugging, etc.), which I assume are the sort Phil Goetz prefers, that included some math.
It was obvious in the comments who had done their homework. Among those who didn’t bother with the technical details, very few made an entertaining or valuable contribution.
It’s fine for less people to be interested in posts with a significant technical component. It’s merely a smaller audience, and the lower numbers of comments and votes shouldn’t discourage those interested in such discussions. Hopefully people who don’t care to fully understand such a post can avoid rashly commenting on it.
One simple improvement would be to add exercises at the end of articles whenever possible, and to encourage people to do them before or instead of reading the comments.
I’ve been collecting exercises (slowly) for years. Would love to contribute to a shared collection of exercises, ideally on a site that allows them to be tagged, rated, searched, and have people comment with their experiences.
I am skeptical that people reading fun shiny LW posts and encountering an exercise would actually then go do that exercise. Doing exercises is work!
Bring on the Work! I would be very interested in seeing rationality exercises posted, including the ones you’ve been collecting.
Where can I find rationality exercises?
The Center for Applied Rationality is currently collecting and developing rationality exercises and training people with them. They have not published a list of their exercises, but you can find a game they made here.
This is a nice idea.
There was a string of decision theory and anthropics posts (including various dilemmas—sleeping beauty, counterfactual mugging, etc.), which I assume are the sort Phil Goetz prefers, that included some math.
It was obvious in the comments who had done their homework. Among those who didn’t bother with the technical details, very few made an entertaining or valuable contribution.
It’s fine for less people to be interested in posts with a significant technical component. It’s merely a smaller audience, and the lower numbers of comments and votes shouldn’t discourage those interested in such discussions. Hopefully people who don’t care to fully understand such a post can avoid rashly commenting on it.