Speaking from my experience, I whole-heartedly recommend going through Eliezer’s old posts and also old LW top level posts in a chronological manner. They’re extremely dense in cross-references and I’ve ended up a few times in browser tab creating sprees that eventually gave me headaches before I switched to a systematic reading plan. Also, keeping track of the comment discussions is only possible this way.
Additionally, there is some sense of unfolding and progression that arises in the strictly chronological way that would be a shame to miss. Naturally, Eliezer tried to advance from easy and independently understandable topics to difficult and heavily interrelated ones. I daresay there was even a heavy emotional charge at the point we reached the final sequences, and I’m sure I was not the only one who was bewildered and intellectually/emotionally exhausted back then. I think it’s definitely worthwhile to emulate the same reading experience by sticking to chronological order.
As a side note, I’m not sure I can recommend binge OB/LW reading to younger humans and less life-hardened persons. It gave me a couple of minor and medium crises of faiths and major shifts of views in a few months. Being a vivid and often lucid dreamer, I’ve also had a more than concerning number of dreams that starred Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Speaking from my experience, I whole-heartedly recommend going through Eliezer’s old posts and also old LW top level posts in a chronological manner. They’re extremely dense in cross-references and I’ve ended up a few times in browser tab creating sprees that eventually gave me headaches before I switched to a systematic reading plan. Also, keeping track of the comment discussions is only possible this way.
Additionally, there is some sense of unfolding and progression that arises in the strictly chronological way that would be a shame to miss. Naturally, Eliezer tried to advance from easy and independently understandable topics to difficult and heavily interrelated ones. I daresay there was even a heavy emotional charge at the point we reached the final sequences, and I’m sure I was not the only one who was bewildered and intellectually/emotionally exhausted back then. I think it’s definitely worthwhile to emulate the same reading experience by sticking to chronological order.
As a side note, I’m not sure I can recommend binge OB/LW reading to younger humans and less life-hardened persons. It gave me a couple of minor and medium crises of faiths and major shifts of views in a few months. Being a vivid and often lucid dreamer, I’ve also had a more than concerning number of dreams that starred Eliezer Yudkowsky.