I didn’t know what exogenous means when I read this either, but I didn’t need to to understand. (I deigned to look it up.
My intuitive judgement of the expected utility of reading what Eliezer Yudkowsky writes is low enough that I can’t get myself to invest a lot of time on it. How could I change my mind about that? It feels like reading a book on string theory, there are no flaws in the math but you also won’t learn anything new about reality.
ETA That isn’t the case for all people. I have read most of Yvain’s posts for example because I felt that it is worth it to read them right away. ETA2 Before someone is going to nitpick, I haven’t read posts like ‘Rational Home Buying’ because I didn’t think it would be worth it. ETA3 Wow I just realized that I really hate Less Wrong, you can’t say something like 99.99% and mean “most” by it.
Incidentally, I disapprove of your using the open thread as your venue for this rather than commenting on the original posts asking for explanations.
I thought it might help people to see exactly how I think about everything as I read it and where I get stuck.
Indeed, if you’re not even going to try to understand, this is the correct response, I suppose.
I do try, but I got the impression that it is wrong to invest a lot of time on it at this point when I haven’t even learnt basic math yet.
Now you might argue that I invested a lot of time into commenting here, but that was rather due to a weakness of will and psychological distress than anything else. Deliberately reading the Sequences is very different here, because it takes an effort that is high enough to make me think about the usefulness of doing so and decide against it.
When I comment here it is often because I feel forced to do it. Often because people say I am wrong etc. so that I feel forced to reply.
I don’t know if it’s something you want to take public, but it might make sense to do a conscious analysis of what you’re expecting the sequences to be.
If you do post the analysis, maybe you can find out something about whether the sequences are like your mental image of them, and even if you don’t post, you might find out something about whether your snap judgement makes sense.
My intuitive judgement of the expected utility of reading what Eliezer Yudkowsky writes is low enough that I can’t get myself to invest a lot of time on it. How could I change my mind about that? It feels like reading a book on string theory, there are no flaws in the math but you also won’t learn anything new about reality.
ETA That isn’t the case for all people. I have read most of Yvain’s posts for example because I felt that it is worth it to read them right away. ETA2 Before someone is going to nitpick, I haven’t read posts like ‘Rational Home Buying’ because I didn’t think it would be worth it. ETA3 Wow I just realized that I really hate Less Wrong, you can’t say something like 99.99% and mean “most” by it.
I thought it might help people to see exactly how I think about everything as I read it and where I get stuck.
I do try, but I got the impression that it is wrong to invest a lot of time on it at this point when I haven’t even learnt basic math yet.
Now you might argue that I invested a lot of time into commenting here, but that was rather due to a weakness of will and psychological distress than anything else. Deliberately reading the Sequences is very different here, because it takes an effort that is high enough to make me think about the usefulness of doing so and decide against it.
When I comment here it is often because I feel forced to do it. Often because people say I am wrong etc. so that I feel forced to reply.
I don’t know if it’s something you want to take public, but it might make sense to do a conscious analysis of what you’re expecting the sequences to be.
If you do post the analysis, maybe you can find out something about whether the sequences are like your mental image of them, and even if you don’t post, you might find out something about whether your snap judgement makes sense.