I think this is a great idea, at least in the distillation aspect. “Read the sequences” is very silly advice. Only one in 100 people will do that. Having briefer statements of the most important posts would be very useful in growing the rationalist community. Curating the best of those posts into a list would give us a briefer “start here” for the (many) people who feel an attraction to the idea of rationality but who don’t want to read a million words (or join the cult that ask implies).
Since we don’t currently have that list of distilled posts (AFAIK—anyone?), getting on it is low-hanging fruit and an incentive to write good distillations and identify the most central posts and points to distill.
I think this is a great idea, at least in the distillation aspect.
Thanks!
Having briefer statements of the most important posts would be very useful in growing the rationalist community.
I think you’re right, but I think it’s also important to think about dilution. Making things lower-effort and more appealing to the masses brings down the walls of the garden, which “dilutes” things inside the garden.
But I’m just saying that this is a consideration. And there are lots of considerations. I feel confused about how to enumerate through them, weigh them, and figure out which way the arrow points: towards being more appealing to the masses or less appealing. I know I probably indicated that I lean towards the former when I talked about “summaries, analyses and distillations” in my OP, but I want to clarify that I feel very uncertain and if anything probably lean towards the latter.
But even if we did want to focus on having taller walls, I think the “more is possible” point that I was ultimately trying to gesture at in my OP still stands. It’s just that the “more” part might mean things like coming up with things like higher quality explanations, more and better examples of what the post is describing, knowledge checks, and exercises.
Since we don’t currently have that list of distilled posts (AFAIK—anyone?)
There is the Sequence Highlights which has an estimated reading time of eight hours.
Worrying about dilution makes sense, but the default is… not reading any part of the Sequences.
I like the readthesequences.com page, because it has the posts without comments. People complain how the posts are long, but the comments are 10x longer, and it is tempting (at least for me) to look at them while reading the posts.
But yes, I also wish we had something even better.
I think this is a great idea, at least in the distillation aspect. “Read the sequences” is very silly advice. Only one in 100 people will do that. Having briefer statements of the most important posts would be very useful in growing the rationalist community. Curating the best of those posts into a list would give us a briefer “start here” for the (many) people who feel an attraction to the idea of rationality but who don’t want to read a million words (or join the cult that ask implies).
Since we don’t currently have that list of distilled posts (AFAIK—anyone?), getting on it is low-hanging fruit and an incentive to write good distillations and identify the most central posts and points to distill.
Thanks!
I think you’re right, but I think it’s also important to think about dilution. Making things lower-effort and more appealing to the masses brings down the walls of the garden, which “dilutes” things inside the garden.
But I’m just saying that this is a consideration. And there are lots of considerations. I feel confused about how to enumerate through them, weigh them, and figure out which way the arrow points: towards being more appealing to the masses or less appealing. I know I probably indicated that I lean towards the former when I talked about “summaries, analyses and distillations” in my OP, but I want to clarify that I feel very uncertain and if anything probably lean towards the latter.
But even if we did want to focus on having taller walls, I think the “more is possible” point that I was ultimately trying to gesture at in my OP still stands. It’s just that the “more” part might mean things like coming up with things like higher quality explanations, more and better examples of what the post is describing, knowledge checks, and exercises.
There is the Sequence Highlights which has an estimated reading time of eight hours.
Worrying about dilution makes sense, but the default is… not reading any part of the Sequences.
I like the readthesequences.com page, because it has the posts without comments. People complain how the posts are long, but the comments are 10x longer, and it is tempting (at least for me) to look at them while reading the posts.
But yes, I also wish we had something even better.