#the sequences

[awetistic-things]

the car crash and young woo’s meltdown was genuinely some of the best acting i’ve seen in a while

[pazodetrasalba]

Self-promotion

Dear Caroline:

I am not sure if the quote you are citing is a real one, extracted from one of Eliezer's book, or a fun parody/suggestion of yours. I do remember finding something approximate in HPMOR (I am a little more than halfway through it) a few chapter ago, less poetic and more coaxing, something like: 'Hey, if you are really enjoying this book, 'tis but a pale shadow of my thoughts as explained in The Sequences, which you can find and read online blahblahblah'. Now this is what I'd call 'shameless self-promotion', and not that famous post of yours from two years ago when you were looking for people to date.

I am enjoying HPMOR, but I'm not sure I would actually relish plodding through even more thousands upon thousands of Eliezeriana. Like, some of the best ideas within can probably be found more succinctly stated elsewhere, and by people who are more technically knowledgable of their areas, like Daniel Kahneman or Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and human and reading time is limited: we have to prioritize. The insistence on 'read The Sequences' I find online (there's an entry about this in the EA forum) feels a little bit like those cases when you are expected to do something tough, unpleasant and difficult which is supposed to 'show character' and mark you as an insider, even if it is not truly perceived as being the most valuable or optimal path (this sounds like it should be a logical fallacy. There's probably a name for it). Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis comes to mind. I remember a memorable review of it in the MAA webpage, which will be today's ending quote. But back to Yudkowski: perhaps I should try some, not many Sequences when I finish his fiction, and then decide for myself.

Quote:

At MIT, the book has been practically canonized: I was once visited by some of my friends taking math in Cambridge and I was angrily dismissed as an ignorant dabbler for even suggesting any other text for undergraduate real analysis even existed. On the other hand, there was a group of math and physics majors at NYU who bought 100 copies of the book merely to burn the entire pile as a statement of their contempt for it.

Andrew Locascio

[liskantope]

Lately I’ve come to realize something about myself. Often I am called gullible, and it’s been pointed out that I’m too quick to accept narratives that are laid out in front of me.

Upon introspection, I still believe there’s a lot of truth to this, but that it’s not the full story. Looking back on my own behavior and beliefs, it seems I have a tendency to be overly-credulous of narratives and arguments that are presented to me, if and only if they’re presented in a nuanced, qualification-heavy way. If some opinion or story is conveyed in black-and-white terms, it’s actually in my nature to be quite argumentative and skeptical towards it. But I am and have always been a sucker for anything that sounds remotely rationalist in flavor. I’m about 93% sure that there’s an essay about exactly this failure mode somewhere in The Sequences, but unsurprisingly I can’t remember where.

If the attractive-sounding-but-unfounded claims that tempt a lot of the public can be called “truthy”, then what should we call these rational-sounding-but-not-the-whole-story claims that tempt me? “Reasony”?

[liskantope]

My slow writing speed really is the bane of my existence.

Says the guy who managed to write some 333 polished essays with highly intellectual content in the span of 2 years.

I’ll just be sitting here trying to discipline my mind into being able to finish at least a short but reasonably coherent Hawks and Handsaws entry this weekend, which will make the first time in two months.

[liskantope]

Just finished Rationality: from AI to Zombies!  Woooo!

Can’t remember precisely when I started reading the sequences but it must have been over a year ago.

[onecornerface]

The Sequences, like any scripture worth living by, should be allowed to challenge us and should be challenged by us in turn.

My philosophy teacher in college once announced he was going to start a cult, and that anyone who wanted to be a member had to hold at least one heretical view.

[drethelin]

An important benefit of the sequences is that for philosophy they are short and get to the point quickly. Also they are internally hyperlinked so you easily see the way ideas interact and can understand dependencies. This is very much not the case if you try to read even very clear writers like Bertrand Russell. Almost every time I've encountered someone referring to a more primary source for eliezer's philosophy, I've found it unreadably boring. Maybe it's just a question of taste. For people who like the style, the sequences feel way better, and for people who like philosophical styles, they feel pointless.