The GNW theory has been kicking about for at least two decades, and this book has been published in 2014. Given this it is almost shocking that the idea wasn’t written up on LW before giving it’s centrality to any understanding of rationality. Shocking but perhaps fortunate, since Kaj has given it a thorough and careful treatment that enables the reader both to understand the idea and evaluate its merits (and almost certainly to save the purchase price of the book).
First, on GNW itself. A lot of the early writing on rationality used the simplified system 1 / system 2 abstraction as the central concept. GNW puts actual meat on this skeleton, describing exactly what unconscious (formerly known as system 1) processes can and can’t do, how they learn, and under what conditions consciousness comes into play. Kaj elaborates more on system 2 in another post, but this review offers enough to reframe the old model in GNW-terms — a reframing that I’ve been convinced is more accurate and meaningful.
As for the post itself, it’s main strength and weakness is that it’s very long. The length is not due to fluff — I’ve compiled my own summary of this post in Roam that runs more than 1,000 words, with almost every paragraph worthy of inclusion. But perhaps, in particular for purposes of a book, the post could more fruitfully broken up in two parts: one to describe the GNW model and its implications, one to cover the experimental evidence for the model and its reliability. The latter takes up almost half of the text of the post by volume, and while it is valuable the former could perhaps stand alone as a worthwhile article (with a reference to a discussion of the experiments so people can assess whether they buy it).
The GNW theory has been kicking about for at least two decades, and this book has been published in 2014. Given this it is almost shocking that the idea wasn’t written up on LW before giving it’s centrality to any understanding of rationality. Shocking but perhaps fortunate, since Kaj has given it a thorough and careful treatment that enables the reader both to understand the idea and evaluate its merits (and almost certainly to save the purchase price of the book).
First, on GNW itself. A lot of the early writing on rationality used the simplified system 1 / system 2 abstraction as the central concept. GNW puts actual meat on this skeleton, describing exactly what unconscious (formerly known as system 1) processes can and can’t do, how they learn, and under what conditions consciousness comes into play. Kaj elaborates more on system 2 in another post, but this review offers enough to reframe the old model in GNW-terms — a reframing that I’ve been convinced is more accurate and meaningful.
As for the post itself, it’s main strength and weakness is that it’s very long. The length is not due to fluff — I’ve compiled my own summary of this post in Roam that runs more than 1,000 words, with almost every paragraph worthy of inclusion. But perhaps, in particular for purposes of a book, the post could more fruitfully broken up in two parts: one to describe the GNW model and its implications, one to cover the experimental evidence for the model and its reliability. The latter takes up almost half of the text of the post by volume, and while it is valuable the former could perhaps stand alone as a worthwhile article (with a reference to a discussion of the experiments so people can assess whether they buy it).