It would definitely be a great addition to the toolkit. Main benefits would be:
1) More shared experiences would probably help strengthen community
2) More shared knowledge to build on in LW/OC posts
3) Difficult books become less intimidating when you know you can ask others for elucidations
4) Building an archive of discussions about certain books could be tremendously helpful to newcomers (wouldn’t you have liked to find such an archive a few years ago?)
+1 point for stating the obvious, yet not yet done.
I also strongly recommend having a book club.
I love HPMoR, but it’s definitely not the only work of fiction worth discussing.
So, everyone,
LET’S DO IT!
edit: I meant online, not just in real life. It should be a section on this site, perhaps next to discussion and main?
I think this is a great idea. For a lot of people involvement in Less Wrong is somewhat sporadic and committing to reading long-form non-fiction is implausible. By the third chapter no one is left. Getting used to discussing journal articles or standalone chapters might make tackling longer texts easier, too.
Does any have things they’d like to read, say, between 30 and 100 pages? What about Scott Aaronson’s “Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity?”
HPMoR is already more than a thousand pages.
I don’t think we are being fair to other works.
The problem here is that HPMoR is a fanfic, while books are books. Fanfics are read chapters at a time, yet books are read in their entirety.
Chapter by chapter discussions of FFs make sense.
However, for books they become tiresome. Think about all the people that want to read the next chapter already.
Why not just have one thread per book, where people can discuss anything they want? Chapters, quotes, themes, etc?
I think people should just live through it and wait until they finish the book to ask.
In my own experience, I remember having questions about a specific line/chapter and then by the end I realize what the answer to the question was, or I realized the question was insignificant.
It would be better if people wrote notes of things to discuss while reading the book and at the end they posted what they wanted to talk about. An added benefit of this is self quality control.
++ Book club
It would definitely be a great addition to the toolkit. Main benefits would be:
1) More shared experiences would probably help strengthen community
2) More shared knowledge to build on in LW/OC posts
3) Difficult books become less intimidating when you know you can ask others for elucidations
4) Building an archive of discussions about certain books could be tremendously helpful to newcomers (wouldn’t you have liked to find such an archive a few years ago?)
+1 point for stating the obvious, yet not yet done. I also strongly recommend having a book club. I love HPMoR, but it’s definitely not the only work of fiction worth discussing. So, everyone, LET’S DO IT!
edit: I meant online, not just in real life. It should be a section on this site, perhaps next to discussion and main?
How about a pdf club for shorter things?
I think this is a great idea. For a lot of people involvement in Less Wrong is somewhat sporadic and committing to reading long-form non-fiction is implausible. By the third chapter no one is left. Getting used to discussing journal articles or standalone chapters might make tackling longer texts easier, too.
Does any have things they’d like to read, say, between 30 and 100 pages? What about Scott Aaronson’s “Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity?”
HPMoR is already more than a thousand pages. I don’t think we are being fair to other works.
The problem here is that HPMoR is a fanfic, while books are books. Fanfics are read chapters at a time, yet books are read in their entirety.
Chapter by chapter discussions of FFs make sense. However, for books they become tiresome. Think about all the people that want to read the next chapter already.
Why not just have one thread per book, where people can discuss anything they want? Chapters, quotes, themes, etc?
We should at least be able to specify minimum chapter requirements, so we can discuss without spoiler disclaimers everywhere.
I think people should just live through it and wait until they finish the book to ask. In my own experience, I remember having questions about a specific line/chapter and then by the end I realize what the answer to the question was, or I realized the question was insignificant. It would be better if people wrote notes of things to discuss while reading the book and at the end they posted what they wanted to talk about. An added benefit of this is self quality control.