I agree that some combination of rewriting and rearranging is called for. I think that most people here haven’t thought of editing the sequences as allowed, because they’re Eliezer’s articles, promoted to high status. In actual fact, that page started as just a categorized list; using it as a suggested reading order came later, and it was never optimized for that purpose. The very notion of reading articles in category-sorted order is pretty stupid; it would be better to give new readers a taste of each of the topics Less Wrong has to offer, to maximize the chance that one of them will pull them in, and then go in depth about particular topics.
There should be particular emphasis on the first posts in a depth-first traversal, since those are what people will start with when told to read the sequences. The first article people will read, following this pattern, is The Simple Truth. And as a newcomer’s introduction to Less Wrong, The Simple Truth is terrible. I mean, it’s a good article, but it’s much too long, indirect and sparse, and it’s aimed at dispelling specific confused notions which most readers won’t even have.
So let’s fix it. Our goal is to choose the first few articles people read, in order to maximize the chance that they get hooked and keep reading. We can either pick high-quality historical posts, by any author, or write new articles specifically for this purpose. The very first article should get special attention, and be chosen carefully. After that, there should be one article about each major topic, before circling around to go into depth about any one topic. Many of the best articles for this purpose will come from the sequence, but there are also a lot of high-quality posts that aren’t part of any sequence that should be considered. It’s also probably a good idea to include a variety of authors, to make it clear that this is a community blog and not just Eliezer.
So please post (1) the one article that you think newcomers should read, to maximize the chance that they read more; and (2) articles you think should be in the first ten articles that a newcomer reads.
So please post (1) the one article that you think newcomers should read, to maximize the chance that they read more; and (2) articles you think should be in the first ten articles that a newcomer reads.
The order in which I would have liked to be introduced to Less Wrong (introduction, wisdom, insight, education, excitement, novelty, fun):
I’m not sure Twelve Virtues of Rationality is the best place to start. To be honest, I was a bit confused reading it the first time, and it only made sense to me after I had spent some time on lesswrong getting used to Eliezer’s writing-style.
For myself (as I know it was for many others), I got here via Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I’d say it’s a great place to start many people off, but perhaps not the majority. Along with that, what got me convinced to start reading lesswrong was my interest in biases and importantly being convinced that I, myself, am biased.
Thus I would propose one starts off with a single post about some bias, especially one that convinces the reader that this is not an abstract experiment involving random test-subjects. I think that Hindsight Devalues Science works excellently for this purpose, although it’s obviously not written as an introductory essay.
After this, I no longer provide any advice as to reading order. You could choose to follow the order provided by XiXiDu above. I provide the following as one order which would at least do better than picking articles at random:
For the record, it’s not too far down my to-do list to write a few long posts that summarize certain sections of the LW canon but also say, “If you want the full argument and the full impact, read posts X, Y, and Z by Eliezer.” The purpose of these posts would be to lower the entry bar for newcomers. Eliezer’s books will do this, too, but lots of people do not read books even if they will read a book’s worth of content in blog posts.
I suspect you’ll see the first of my sequence-summarizing posts within a month.
Our goal is to choose the first few articles people read, in order to maximize the chance that they get hooked and keep reading.
I am doing a reordering of posts in the sequences with a different goal and according to a different method. I started yesterday.
I undertook to rewrite a book from the Harvard Negotiation Project as hyperlinks to LW articles with a few words in between, sort of in thisstyle. It is not optimized to be an organized introduction to the material, but it does trace a book that was so designed. I hope to learn about the relationship between LW thought and HNP thought, and expect to do so from sections in which HNP has content LW other does not, or where LW would insert content. This is also a test of both thought systems.
So this would be for someone committed to reading more than one blog post, as the first will not be designed to stir curiosity for the second.
I agree that some combination of rewriting and rearranging is called for. I think that most people here haven’t thought of editing the sequences as allowed, because they’re Eliezer’s articles, promoted to high status. In actual fact, that page started as just a categorized list; using it as a suggested reading order came later, and it was never optimized for that purpose. The very notion of reading articles in category-sorted order is pretty stupid; it would be better to give new readers a taste of each of the topics Less Wrong has to offer, to maximize the chance that one of them will pull them in, and then go in depth about particular topics.
There should be particular emphasis on the first posts in a depth-first traversal, since those are what people will start with when told to read the sequences. The first article people will read, following this pattern, is The Simple Truth. And as a newcomer’s introduction to Less Wrong, The Simple Truth is terrible. I mean, it’s a good article, but it’s much too long, indirect and sparse, and it’s aimed at dispelling specific confused notions which most readers won’t even have.
So let’s fix it. Our goal is to choose the first few articles people read, in order to maximize the chance that they get hooked and keep reading. We can either pick high-quality historical posts, by any author, or write new articles specifically for this purpose. The very first article should get special attention, and be chosen carefully. After that, there should be one article about each major topic, before circling around to go into depth about any one topic. Many of the best articles for this purpose will come from the sequence, but there are also a lot of high-quality posts that aren’t part of any sequence that should be considered. It’s also probably a good idea to include a variety of authors, to make it clear that this is a community blog and not just Eliezer.
So please post (1) the one article that you think newcomers should read, to maximize the chance that they read more; and (2) articles you think should be in the first ten articles that a newcomer reads.
The order in which I would have liked to be introduced to Less Wrong (introduction, wisdom, insight, education, excitement, novelty, fun):
Introduction
Twelve Virtues of Rationality
An interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky (Parts 1, 2 and 3)
Wisdom & Insight
Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease
Self-fulfilling correlations
Probability is in the Mind
You’re Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof
Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others...
Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality
Occam’s Razor
Confidence levels inside and outside an argument
Education
An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem
Excitement, Novelty, Fun
The Apologist and the Revolutionary
Beyond the Reach of God
The mathematical universe: the map that is the territory
That Alien Message
A Much Better Life?
More
List of all articles from Less Wrong (In chronological order.)
References & Resources for LessWrong
I’m not sure Twelve Virtues of Rationality is the best place to start. To be honest, I was a bit confused reading it the first time, and it only made sense to me after I had spent some time on lesswrong getting used to Eliezer’s writing-style.
For myself (as I know it was for many others), I got here via Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I’d say it’s a great place to start many people off, but perhaps not the majority. Along with that, what got me convinced to start reading lesswrong was my interest in biases and importantly being convinced that I, myself, am biased.
Thus I would propose one starts off with a single post about some bias, especially one that convinces the reader that this is not an abstract experiment involving random test-subjects. I think that Hindsight Devalues Science works excellently for this purpose, although it’s obviously not written as an introductory essay.
Follow this up with some posts from Map And Territory, namely: What Do We Mean by Rationality, What is Evidence, and The Lens that Sees its Flaws, in that order, to give a basic introduction to what rationality actually is. This could be followed by one or two more posts from Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, so why not start with the first two: Making Beliefs Pay Rent in Anticipated Experiences and Belief in Belief.
Now, you could finally digress to Twelve Virtues Of Rationality and then maybe try your hand at the whole Map and Territory Sequence (skipping over those posts you’ve already seen), alternatively you could finish reading the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence first.
After this, I no longer provide any advice as to reading order. You could choose to follow the order provided by XiXiDu above. I provide the following as one order which would at least do better than picking articles at random:
Finish reading Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions if you haven’t already done so.
The whole mega-sequence of How to Actually Change Your Mind contains a lot of pretty important stuff, but will take a while to read.
The rest of Lesswrong. ;)
Summary:
Hindsight Devalues Science
What Do We Mean by Rationality
What is Evidence
The Lens that Sees its Flaws
Making Beliefs Pay Rent in Anticipated Experiences
Belief in Belief
And then follow with either of:
Path a
Twelve Virtues Of Rationality
Map and Territory Sequence
Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions Sequence
Path b
Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions Sequence
Twelve Virtues Of Rationality
Map and Territory Sequence
Which concludes my recommendation.
For anyone interested, I’ve made an ebook variants for myself (epub, mobi, PDF, odt). It is far from awesome, but at least readable on e-book reader. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6agp4otiukejb0g/AACO-5V1J8i0USBWUFL9nw74a
For the record, it’s not too far down my to-do list to write a few long posts that summarize certain sections of the LW canon but also say, “If you want the full argument and the full impact, read posts X, Y, and Z by Eliezer.” The purpose of these posts would be to lower the entry bar for newcomers. Eliezer’s books will do this, too, but lots of people do not read books even if they will read a book’s worth of content in blog posts.
I suspect you’ll see the first of my sequence-summarizing posts within a month.
I am doing a reordering of posts in the sequences with a different goal and according to a different method. I started yesterday.
I undertook to rewrite a book from the Harvard Negotiation Project as hyperlinks to LW articles with a few words in between, sort of in this style. It is not optimized to be an organized introduction to the material, but it does trace a book that was so designed. I hope to learn about the relationship between LW thought and HNP thought, and expect to do so from sections in which HNP has content LW other does not, or where LW would insert content. This is also a test of both thought systems.
So this would be for someone committed to reading more than one blog post, as the first will not be designed to stir curiosity for the second.
Thanks, this is a great suggestion, I think this would be more helpful.