Curious what essays make your top 10 list?
Here’s a few, unordered:
As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell
The Tyranny of Structurelessness, by Jo Freeman
Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation, by Norbert Wiener
Can we Survive technology?, by John von Neumann (though I may be a bit biased here as I’ve had personal interaction with one of his family members)
Oh, that makes sense. Yepp, if you’re talking about essays from throughout history then breaking the top 10 does seem like a high bar.
Though I think, for me, that the following probably make it in (especially when I weight more heavily on usefulness to me, rather than prescience): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA4gF5KrboK2m2Xu7/how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb/p/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/this-is-the-dream-time.html
‘This is the dream time’ is definitely one of the best modern essays. Interestingly the two SSC essays you picked I found to be quite average for Scott Alexander, I thought some of his book reviews to be extraordinary, like ‘Albion’s Seed’.
Curious what essays make your top 10 list?
Here’s a few, unordered:
As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell
The Tyranny of Structurelessness, by Jo Freeman
Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation, by Norbert Wiener
Can we Survive technology?, by John von Neumann (though I may be a bit biased here as I’ve had personal interaction with one of his family members)
Oh, that makes sense. Yepp, if you’re talking about essays from throughout history then breaking the top 10 does seem like a high bar.
Though I think, for me, that the following probably make it in (especially when I weight more heavily on usefulness to me, rather than prescience): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA4gF5KrboK2m2Xu7/how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb/p/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/this-is-the-dream-time.html
‘This is the dream time’ is definitely one of the best modern essays. Interestingly the two SSC essays you picked I found to be quite average for Scott Alexander, I thought some of his book reviews to be extraordinary, like ‘Albion’s Seed’.