If they are a reader, try Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It is currently the closest thing to Less Wrong in book form while still being readable and interesting to the layman. On the other hand, your gift would probably be more appreciated if it was chosen to reflect their interests rather than yours.
Thirded, it is definitely “LessWrong, the Book”, although it doesn’t do a lot of Bayes, or any QM, FAI, reductionism, or meanings of words. Actually, I guess that makes it more like “Overcoming Bias, The Book”, except without all the status and signaling, and omitting the near/far inflence on behavior, except as mediated by thinking.
(Holy crap, how big would LW/OB the book be if you included all that stuff? Thinking Fast and Slow is huge, physically speaking.)
I’m reading ciphergoth’s LW ebook on my phone. It gets a bit dull around page 12,000 (of ~20,000 * ) where it’s only one side of EY’s debates on AI with Robin Hanson. But certainly good up to there.
** Mobipocket Reader for BlackBerry calls a two-paragraph screen a “page”, so a 300-page paperback turns into ~2000 screens. The Sequences remain very* long.
If they are a reader, try Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It is currently the closest thing to Less Wrong in book form while still being readable and interesting to the layman. On the other hand, your gift would probably be more appreciated if it was chosen to reflect their interests rather than yours.
I am currently reading this book and would like to second the recommendation.
Thirded, it is definitely “LessWrong, the Book”, although it doesn’t do a lot of Bayes, or any QM, FAI, reductionism, or meanings of words. Actually, I guess that makes it more like “Overcoming Bias, The Book”, except without all the status and signaling, and omitting the near/far inflence on behavior, except as mediated by thinking.
(Holy crap, how big would LW/OB the book be if you included all that stuff? Thinking Fast and Slow is huge, physically speaking.)
Clearly it needs to be sold in a combo with Gary Drescher’s Good and Real.
I’m reading ciphergoth’s LW ebook on my phone. It gets a bit dull around page 12,000 (of ~20,000 * ) where it’s only one side of EY’s debates on AI with Robin Hanson. But certainly good up to there.
** Mobipocket Reader for BlackBerry calls a two-paragraph screen a “page”, so a 300-page paperback turns into ~2000 screens. The Sequences remain very* long.