A thing very unobvious to me and hard to figure out – how much depth is there here? There’s a version of this I’d expect to be pretty interesting even if I already follow you and Samo, and version where I spend the whole time thinking “okay, I get it.”
(for onlookers: I would not want to rely soley on a series by Samo and Richard for getting my political background knowledge but I’ve historically found them both useful frames to have in my pocket)
Good question. I learned from my last curriculum (the AGI safety fundamentals one) that I should make my curricula harder than I instinctively want to. So I included a bunch of readings that I personally took a long time to appreciate as much as I do now (e.g. Hoffman on the debtor’s revolt, Yudkowsky on local validity, Sotala on beliefs as emotional strategies, Moses on The Germans in week 1). Overall I think there’s at least one reading per week that would reward very deep thought. Also I’m very near (and plausibly literally on) the global Pareto frontier in how much I appreciate all of MAGA-type politics, rationalist-type analysis, and hippie-type discussion of trauma, embodied emotions, etc. I’ve tried to include enough of all of these in there that very few people will consistently think “okay, I get it”.
Having said that, people kept recommending that I include books, and I kept telling them I couldn’t because I only want to give people 20k words max of main readings per week. Given a word budget it seems like people will learn more from reading many short essays than a few books. But maybe that’s an artifact of how I personally think (basically, I like to start as broad as possible and then triangulate my way down to specific truths), whereas other people might get more out of going deeper into fewer topics.
I do think that there’s not enough depth to be really persuasive to people who go in strongly disagreeing with me on some/all of these topics. My hope is that I can at least convey that there’s some shape of coherent worldview here, which people will find valuable to engage with even if they don’t buy it wholesale.
Also I’m very near (and plausibly literally on) the global Pareto frontier in how much I appreciate all of MAGA-type politics, rationalist-type analysis, and hippie-type discussion of trauma, embodied emotions, etc. I’ve tried to include enough of all of these in there that very few people will consistently think “okay, I get it”.
Yeah this is why I would recommend the series to people who aren’t already following you relatively closely, I’m mostly like “will I get something out of this if I’m already reading most of what Richard and Samo say online?” (I don’t actually read Samo in depth but skim him)
A thing very unobvious to me and hard to figure out – how much depth is there here? There’s a version of this I’d expect to be pretty interesting even if I already follow you and Samo, and version where I spend the whole time thinking “okay, I get it.”
(for onlookers: I would not want to rely soley on a series by Samo and Richard for getting my political background knowledge but I’ve historically found them both useful frames to have in my pocket)
Good question. I learned from my last curriculum (the AGI safety fundamentals one) that I should make my curricula harder than I instinctively want to. So I included a bunch of readings that I personally took a long time to appreciate as much as I do now (e.g. Hoffman on the debtor’s revolt, Yudkowsky on local validity, Sotala on beliefs as emotional strategies, Moses on The Germans in week 1). Overall I think there’s at least one reading per week that would reward very deep thought. Also I’m very near (and plausibly literally on) the global Pareto frontier in how much I appreciate all of MAGA-type politics, rationalist-type analysis, and hippie-type discussion of trauma, embodied emotions, etc. I’ve tried to include enough of all of these in there that very few people will consistently think “okay, I get it”.
Having said that, people kept recommending that I include books, and I kept telling them I couldn’t because I only want to give people 20k words max of main readings per week. Given a word budget it seems like people will learn more from reading many short essays than a few books. But maybe that’s an artifact of how I personally think (basically, I like to start as broad as possible and then triangulate my way down to specific truths), whereas other people might get more out of going deeper into fewer topics.
I do think that there’s not enough depth to be really persuasive to people who go in strongly disagreeing with me on some/all of these topics. My hope is that I can at least convey that there’s some shape of coherent worldview here, which people will find valuable to engage with even if they don’t buy it wholesale.
Yeah this is why I would recommend the series to people who aren’t already following you relatively closely, I’m mostly like “will I get something out of this if I’m already reading most of what Richard and Samo say online?” (I don’t actually read Samo in depth but skim him)