It would be nice to follow the same advice ourselves and not bombard newbies with lesswrong-specific jargon they probably don’t understand. At the very least, we should provide links to a description. Such as Rationalist Taboo.
I was just going to say that I had already linked him to that page in a previous reply to him, but it turns out I linked a different page. Oops. :[ Good call.
Sorry I edited the above post and was working on it when you must’ve replied to the unedited post. The wiki (and even the FAQ) basically just says “and here’s all the sequences that you can read.” Yeah, I get that there’s inferential distance between a completely new participant (such as draq) and the rest of the LW community, but I think it would be useful to have a short guide that serves as a brief introduction to LW.
This guide could also serve as a solid primer on LW core tenets and community norms for participants who really don’t need to trudge through all of the sequences, but might be able to pick up the ideas much more quickly: something like the mind projection fallacy, which was particularly easy to understand, and could’ve really been explained in a paragraph or two.
I’m not sure I’m intrepid enough to summarize even just the core sequences, so perhaps instead we could just make a list of the most important posts. Something like “if you only have time to read 5-10 posts, read these.” We could maybe divide it further into something like this:
It would be nice to have a summary of How to Actually Change Your Mind but it’s also quite long, consisting of several subsequences. It would be a major effort to summarize this.
Are you asking me to use a certain LW-inside vocabulary? In that case, a dictionary would be helpful. Which specific word or phrase is not clear to you?
Or are you holding a logical positivist position that some words or context does not have any meaning at all?
Are you asking me to use a certain LW-inside vocabulary? In that case, a dictionary would be helpful.
The idea of rationalist taboo is not to use LW-inside vocabulary. On the contrary, one lesson of rationalist taboo is that we should be able to reduce LW-inside vocabulary to non-LW-inside vocabulary. If we can’t do that, we’re doing rationalism wrong.
I have a hard time understanding what you’re saying in this and the last post. You need to play more rationalist taboo.
It would be nice to follow the same advice ourselves and not bombard newbies with lesswrong-specific jargon they probably don’t understand. At the very least, we should provide links to a description. Such as Rationalist Taboo.
I was just going to say that I had already linked him to that page in a previous reply to him, but it turns out I linked a different page. Oops. :[ Good call.
Isn’t that what the wiki is supposed to be?
Sorry I edited the above post and was working on it when you must’ve replied to the unedited post. The wiki (and even the FAQ) basically just says “and here’s all the sequences that you can read.” Yeah, I get that there’s inferential distance between a completely new participant (such as draq) and the rest of the LW community, but I think it would be useful to have a short guide that serves as a brief introduction to LW.
This guide could also serve as a solid primer on LW core tenets and community norms for participants who really don’t need to trudge through all of the sequences, but might be able to pick up the ideas much more quickly: something like the mind projection fallacy, which was particularly easy to understand, and could’ve really been explained in a paragraph or two.
I agree.
I’m not sure I’m intrepid enough to summarize even just the core sequences, so perhaps instead we could just make a list of the most important posts. Something like “if you only have time to read 5-10 posts, read these.” We could maybe divide it further into something like this:
Core Principles
your intuitions are not magic
beliefs should pay rent
words can be wrong
It would be nice to have a summary of How to Actually Change Your Mind but it’s also quite long, consisting of several subsequences. It would be a major effort to summarize this.
Tools
Rationalist taboo
Least convenient possible world
Reversal test
This list is incomplete, so let me know which important posts I’m missing
Are you asking me to use a certain LW-inside vocabulary? In that case, a dictionary would be helpful. Which specific word or phrase is not clear to you?
Or are you holding a logical positivist position that some words or context does not have any meaning at all?
The idea of rationalist taboo is not to use LW-inside vocabulary. On the contrary, one lesson of rationalist taboo is that we should be able to reduce LW-inside vocabulary to non-LW-inside vocabulary. If we can’t do that, we’re doing rationalism wrong.