This has been discussed in passing several times, but I thought it might be worthwhile to collect a list of recommended reading for new members and/or aspiring rationalists. There's probably going to be plenty of overlap with the SingInst reading list, but I think the purposes of the two are sufficiently distinct that a separate list is appropriate.
Some requests:
- A list of blog posts can be collected at another point in spacetime; for now, please stick to books, book sections, or essays1.
- Please post a single suggestion per comment, so upvoting can determine the final list for the eternal fame of wikihood.
- Please limit yourself to no more than 3-5 suggestions. We could probably all think of dozens, try and think what would actually be the best for the purposes of this site.
- Please only suggest an entry if you've read it. Judgement Under Uncertainty, while certain to make the list, should be put there by someone who has invested the time and waded through it (i.e. someone other than me).
- Please say why you're suggesting it. What did you learn from it? What is its specific relevance to rationality? (ETA)
Happy posting!
PS - Is there a "New Readers Start Here" page, or something similar (aside from "About")? I seem to remember someone talking about one, but I can't find it.
1"Everything Eliezer has ever written (since 2001)... twice!" while likely a highly beneficial suggestion for every single human being in existence, is not an acceptable entry. A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation is fine. If you're not sure whether to classify something as "an essay" or "a blog post", there is a little-known trick to distinguish the two: essays contain small nuggets of vanadium ore, and blog posts contain shreds of palladium. Alternatively, just use your best judgement.
Greg Egan's Axiomatic).
This is his first collection of short stories. Half of them are fictional explorations of what it would really be like, for the mind to be literally a physical process of the brain, usually with some near-future technology thrown in to sharpen the issues. The title story is about choosing your own utility function, "Learning To Be Me" is Philosophy of Uploading 101, "A Kidnapping" is about stealing a copy of someone's upload, and the others look at other aspects. "Seeing" uses no future science, only present-day knowledge, but is still squarely a science fiction story -- the science just happens to be already here.
Another strong theme is ethics, and especially the ethical issues that arise from our greater physical understanding of what people are: "Blood Sisters", "The Cutie", "Appropriate Love", "The Moat", "The Moral Virologist", and again "Axiomatic".
"The Hundred Light-Year Diary" is about predestination and free will, a theme that appears in several of the other stories. "Whatever the unchangeable future holds, I'm sure of one thing: who I am is still a part of what always has, and always will, decide it." (A theme of Eliezer's on occasion.)
One story is about the many-worlds theory, and another is about the exponential probability distribution.
After which you can read his second short story collection).
maybe a separate list for fiction with rationalist themes would be a good idea?
there are the obvious problems with fiction for learning things (the rules of a fictional world may not apply the one we live in), but I'd be very interested in hearing recommendations, if only because because i suspect that there is some correlation between being an LW-reader and the books we'd like.