I would really like to recommend a process where we try to always be ready to provide a link to some approachable pre-written introductory materials instead of having to perform an oration (I think it’s reasonable to expect members to read something). But I notice a huge difficulty with that: Often, the material that the most senior members of a movement have read and are familiar with is the worst rendition of the material that was ever written.
For instance, I’m pretty sure we should not be recommending the sequences over Scout Mindset, but I’m not completely sure, because I haven’t read Scout Mindset, it’s a wonder that I have even read a review of it, because, you see, I have already read the sequences and so the prospect of reading a refined phrasing of the same message is super boring to me. (same with Brian Christian’s The Alignment Problem over Superintelligence)
With textbooks, I imagine this problem is a lot worse. And all of this is exacerbated by the fact that one who’s already deeply internalized the material can’t read a new introductory textbook with fresh eyes and know how it would land for a newbie.
(You could probably find some really horrific examples of this in academic philosophy, where reading the original flawed renditions of the ideas is actually necessary to engage with the begged controversies of the contemporary discourse.)
I would really like to recommend a process where we try to always be ready to provide a link to some approachable pre-written introductory materials instead of having to perform an oration (I think it’s reasonable to expect members to read something). But I notice a huge difficulty with that: Often, the material that the most senior members of a movement have read and are familiar with is the worst rendition of the material that was ever written.
For instance, I’m pretty sure we should not be recommending the sequences over Scout Mindset, but I’m not completely sure, because I haven’t read Scout Mindset, it’s a wonder that I have even read a review of it, because, you see, I have already read the sequences and so the prospect of reading a refined phrasing of the same message is super boring to me.
(same with Brian Christian’s The Alignment Problem over Superintelligence)
With textbooks, I imagine this problem is a lot worse. And all of this is exacerbated by the fact that one who’s already deeply internalized the material can’t read a new introductory textbook with fresh eyes and know how it would land for a newbie.
(You could probably find some really horrific examples of this in academic philosophy, where reading the original flawed renditions of the ideas is actually necessary to engage with the begged controversies of the contemporary discourse.)