It would definitely be neat to read a history of that sort. Having myself not read many of the books that Eliezer references as forerunners, that area of history is one that I at least would like to learn more about.
I actually have not seen such a bibliography, though I could infer a lot from his language choices in essays like Twelve Virtues. Can you share a pointer to his list of forerunners?
I don’t expect there is much on it that will surprise me, but I would very much like to read it nevertheless.
Here’s a few quick links where Eliezer talks about books that influenced him, or makes book recommendations. This isn’t a precise response to the initial prompt of ‘forerunners’, just what turned up when I searched for Eliezer talking about books he‘s read and recommends.
For rationality reading, he lists some books in a comment here. Standout books were E.T. Jaynes’ “Probability Theory: The Logic of Science”, Judea Pearl’s “Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems”, and the collected papers of Kahneman & Tversky (and colleagues). He further mentions his feelings on Jaynes here.
Eliezer has a (pretty old) bookshelf here of books that had a fair bit of impact on him (which he wrote when he was 20, so a whole decade before LW). He also lists “Good Idealistic Books” that he read in his youth.
Eliezer has talked about rationalist fiction he has read in the past here. In this post he mentions that he was heavily influenced by his parents collection of old science fiction. Recently on Twitter he listed more.
Now I’m laughing, because looking through those explicit lists I am finding pretty much all of the two dozen or so sources I expected to find based on various hints and callbacks. Almost all of them books very familiar to me as well.
It would definitely be neat to read a history of that sort. Having myself not read many of the books that Eliezer references as forerunners, that area of history is one that I at least would like to learn more about.
I actually have not seen such a bibliography, though I could infer a lot from his language choices in essays like Twelve Virtues. Can you share a pointer to his list of forerunners?
I don’t expect there is much on it that will surprise me, but I would very much like to read it nevertheless.
Here’s a few quick links where Eliezer talks about books that influenced him, or makes book recommendations. This isn’t a precise response to the initial prompt of ‘forerunners’, just what turned up when I searched for Eliezer talking about books he‘s read and recommends.
For rationality reading, he lists some books in a comment here. Standout books were E.T. Jaynes’ “Probability Theory: The Logic of Science”, Judea Pearl’s “Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems”, and the collected papers of Kahneman & Tversky (and colleagues). He further mentions his feelings on Jaynes here.
Eliezer has a (pretty old) bookshelf here of books that had a fair bit of impact on him (which he wrote when he was 20, so a whole decade before LW). He also lists “Good Idealistic Books” that he read in his youth.
Eliezer has talked about rationalist fiction he has read in the past here. In this post he mentions that he was heavily influenced by his parents collection of old science fiction. Recently on Twitter he listed more.
Now I’m laughing, because looking through those explicit lists I am finding pretty much all of the two dozen or so sources I expected to find based on various hints and callbacks. Almost all of them books very familiar to me as well.
Yes, this essay is going to be fun to write.