I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but, The Simple Truth is stylistically totally different from the rest of the Sequences, extremely long, and rather meandering. I think it’s enjoyable if you’ve already bought in to the memeplex but utterly confusing if you haven’t. Specifically, I tried to get my wife to read the Seauences and The Simple Truth was the article that she never got past. I know, n=1 and all, but I stand by my other points.
Plus, more generally, if I were putting the book together I’d want to shuttle the reader from page 1 to Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions as soon as I could, since MAMQ is where the Sequences really pulls up the landing gear and takes off. Putting “The Simple Truth” at the start puts another 7,000-odd words between the reader and that take-off. (And I agree that it’s tortuous & opaque, which just makes it an even bigger roadblock. I’d hide it an appendix too.)
I agree with this. I’d start with some bits and pieces of the Map/Territory sequence, followed by a crash course on assorted cognitive biases (because it won’t make sense that Map/Territory talks at length about ‘human irrationality’ and ‘bias’ unless the reader is swiftly provided with examples), followed immediately by a (slightly modified) Mysterious Answers. Then How To Actually Change Your Mind.
It’s a story you either love or hate. I happen to love it, but that’s probably because (a) I already agree with the ideas, and (b) I have met people expressing the silly ideas in real life, so I know what it is about. -- In other words, it is a bit like an applause light for the believers. Not a good introduction.
I also happen to love the “twelve virtues”… so I am curious whether people have mixed reactions to that one, too. Unlike the simple truth, the twelve virtues is short. (More precisely, the individual twelve points are short; but the total length is still acceptable.)
I neither love nor hate it. It’s pretty good. The concept is great; the execution is a bit too injokey and unstructured. Perhaps the main problem is that you need to be pretty savvy and experienced regarding pop philosophy to know what the point of the allegory is (without expending a fair amount of effort), but the sorts of people most likely to make the crude errors The Simple Truth is correcting aren’t likely to be particularly savvy.
I do love The Twelve Virtues, though I think they could easily be compressed to something cleaner and easier to remember (e.g., with less built-in redundancy). For instance, Relinquishment and Humility seem to just be special cases of Lightness and Evenness (with a dash of cog-sci Empiricism/Scholarship, mayhap).
If I were redoing the list, I’d go with Ten Virtues, something more like: Curiosity, Daring, Attentiveness, Lightness, Evenness, Simplicity, Precision, Rigor, Community, The Void.
(‘Argument’ breaks up into Daring and Community, ‘Empiricism’ breaks up into Daring and Attentiveness and Simplicity and pretty much all of the other virtues, ‘Scholarship’ breaks up into Rigor and Community, etc. I’d still want virtues like Scholarship explicitly talked about, but as more complicated practices that come out of the primary-color virtues.)
Yeah, I usually make it explicitly clear that the style of The Simple Truth is nothing like the style of the sequences. I also point out that some people are not fond of it when recommending it.
Exactly what I was thinking! Also, I often send people ‘The Simple Truth’ when I start recommending them to read the LessWrong Sequences.
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but, The Simple Truth is stylistically totally different from the rest of the Sequences, extremely long, and rather meandering. I think it’s enjoyable if you’ve already bought in to the memeplex but utterly confusing if you haven’t. Specifically, I tried to get my wife to read the Seauences and The Simple Truth was the article that she never got past. I know, n=1 and all, but I stand by my other points.
Plus, more generally, if I were putting the book together I’d want to shuttle the reader from page 1 to Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions as soon as I could, since MAMQ is where the Sequences really pulls up the landing gear and takes off. Putting “The Simple Truth” at the start puts another 7,000-odd words between the reader and that take-off. (And I agree that it’s tortuous & opaque, which just makes it an even bigger roadblock. I’d hide it an appendix too.)
I agree with this. I’d start with some bits and pieces of the Map/Territory sequence, followed by a crash course on assorted cognitive biases (because it won’t make sense that Map/Territory talks at length about ‘human irrationality’ and ‘bias’ unless the reader is swiftly provided with examples), followed immediately by a (slightly modified) Mysterious Answers. Then How To Actually Change Your Mind.
It’s a story you either love or hate. I happen to love it, but that’s probably because (a) I already agree with the ideas, and (b) I have met people expressing the silly ideas in real life, so I know what it is about. -- In other words, it is a bit like an applause light for the believers. Not a good introduction.
I also happen to love the “twelve virtues”… so I am curious whether people have mixed reactions to that one, too. Unlike the simple truth, the twelve virtues is short. (More precisely, the individual twelve points are short; but the total length is still acceptable.)
I neither love nor hate it. It’s pretty good. The concept is great; the execution is a bit too injokey and unstructured. Perhaps the main problem is that you need to be pretty savvy and experienced regarding pop philosophy to know what the point of the allegory is (without expending a fair amount of effort), but the sorts of people most likely to make the crude errors The Simple Truth is correcting aren’t likely to be particularly savvy.
I do love The Twelve Virtues, though I think they could easily be compressed to something cleaner and easier to remember (e.g., with less built-in redundancy). For instance, Relinquishment and Humility seem to just be special cases of Lightness and Evenness (with a dash of cog-sci Empiricism/Scholarship, mayhap).
If I were redoing the list, I’d go with Ten Virtues, something more like: Curiosity, Daring, Attentiveness, Lightness, Evenness, Simplicity, Precision, Rigor, Community, The Void.
(‘Argument’ breaks up into Daring and Community, ‘Empiricism’ breaks up into Daring and Attentiveness and Simplicity and pretty much all of the other virtues, ‘Scholarship’ breaks up into Rigor and Community, etc. I’d still want virtues like Scholarship explicitly talked about, but as more complicated practices that come out of the primary-color virtues.)
Yeah, I usually make it explicitly clear that the style of The Simple Truth is nothing like the style of the sequences. I also point out that some people are not fond of it when recommending it.