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gwern comments on Rationality Quotes November 2009 - Less Wrong
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By the way, what's so special about it? I got it off Amazon a while ago and read it up to around page 100, but none of the content up to that seemed too special. This might be because I'd already internalized many of those points off OB/LW, of course, but still.
Large chunks of the remaining book seem to mostly be about physics and ethics. I'm hesitant to spend time reading any popular physics, as I don't know the actual math behind it and am likely to just get a distorted image. Formal ethical systems are mainly just rationalizations for existing intuitions, so that doesn't seem too interesting, either. Where are the good bits?
I read it twice, and I'd summarize it as: for a longtime OB/LW reader, the only interesting parts are the treatment of Quantum Mechanics and the Newcomb's Dilemma chapters*. Those, incidentally, are past page 100.
* I assume that the person taking the advice is like me and has not understood very much of the 'timeless decision theory' stuff that's been flying around for months, which Drescher takes seriously (he's a user here after all), and which seem to be similar to or better to what he advocates.