= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Will_Newsome comments on Compartmentalization in epistemic and instrumental rationality - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (121)
After trying to figure out where the response would be best suited, I'm splitting the difference; I'll put a summary here, and if it's not obviously stupid and seems to garner comments, I'll post the full thing on its own.
I've read some of the sequences, but not all; I started to, and then wandered off. Here are my theories as to why, with brief explanations.
1) The minimum suggested reading is not just long, it's deceptively long.
The quantity by itself is a pretty big hurdle to someone who's only just developing an interest in its topics, and the way the sequences are indexed hides the actual amount of content behind categorized links. This is the wrong direction in which to surprise the would-be reader. And that's just talking about the core sequences.
2) Many of the sequences are either not interesting to me, or are presented in ways that make them appear not to be.
If the topic actually doesn't interest me, that's fine, because I presumably won't be trying to discuss it, either. But some of the sequence titles are more pithy than informative, and some of the introductory text is dissuasive where it tries to be inviting; few of them give a clear summary of what the subject is and who needs to read it.
3) Even the ones which are interesting to me contain way more information, or at least text, than I needed.
I don't think it's actually true that every new reader needs to read all of the sequences. I'm a bad example, because there's a lot in them I've never heard of or even thought about, but I don't think that's true of everyone who walks up to LW for the first time. On the other hand, just because I'd never heard of Bayes's Theorem by name doesn't mean that I need a huge missive to explain it to me. What I turned out to need was an example problem, the fact that the general form of the math I used to solve it is named after a guy called Bayes, and an explanation of how the term is used in prose. I was frustrated by having to go through a very long introduction in order to get those things (and I didn't entirely get the last one).
My proposal for addressing these is to create a single introductory page with inline links to glossary definitions, and from there to further reading. The idea is that more information is available up front and a new reader can more easily prioritize the articles based on their own knowledge and interest; it would also provide a general overview of the topics LW addresses. (The About page is a good introduction to the site, but not the subjects.) On a quick search, the glossary appears to have been suggested before but not yet exist--unless I just can't find it, in which case it's not doing much good. There are parts of this I'm not qualified to do, but I'd be happy to donate time to the ones that I am.
Good analysis.
Also briefly explaining where the subjects connect to rationality. It's not immediately obvious what e.g. evolutionary biology or quantum physics have to do with human rationality, which probably puts people off. Actually, it's so not-obvious that I think it'd be easy to miss the point if one wasn't somewhat careful about making sure they read most of the posts in the sequence, or the ones explaining how everything's connected.
By the by, is this a vote for or against making an actual post on this subject (or neither)? I'm trying to get a sense of whether that would be acceptable and useful; I've gotten a handful of upvotes on comments about it, but I don't know if that means to go ahead or not. (This is an area of local etiquette I'm not yet familiar with and don't particularly want to take the karma hit for messing up.)
In general, suggestions for site improvements are frowned upon because very few people here are keen on actually implementing them, and the typical response is "Yeah that'd be great, now let's have a long discussion about how great that is and subtle improvements that could make it even better while not actually doing anything."
Less Wrong needs improvements, but more than that it needs people willing to improve it. The Intro Page idea has been around for awhile, but the people who have control over the site have a lot of other stuff to focus on and there's limited time. So overall I don't think a post would be good, but I'm unsure as to how to fix the general problem.
Thanks, that's the answer I was looking for.
If it was done on the wiki, would they need to commit time to it? It seems like a dedicated member or set of members could just write the page and present it to the community as a fait accompli. The only reason I haven't done it is that i don't feel I know enough yet. Maybe I'll do it anyway, and that will inspire more experienced LWers to come fix it. ;)
Yes, write something on the wiki and ask later for it to be placed somewhere useful. There is the problem that the people who need introductions probably aren't going to write them. If you go back to reading the sequences, it would be a good exercise to write summaries.
Yup. And for people who don't need them, it's pretty tedious.
That occurred to me as well. We'll see how that comes along.
I'll vote for making a post.
I like your characterization of what is "wrong" with the sequences, but I'm not sure what ought to be done about it. I suspect that different people need to read different sequence postings. I would like to have the introduction pages for each sequence be expanded to provide roughly a paragraph of description for each posting in the sequence. If you disagree with the paragraph or don't understand it, then you should probably read that posting.
ETA: After reading Will's comment, I will withdraw my vote. Proceed with caution.
I agree; that's one of the things I wanted to discuss (and something my solution would theoretically address). I might try to find another useful place to put my longer writeup of the subject, e.g. my own talk page on the wiki.
This is a very good point; I agree that this belongs in the summary. In fact, logically, it would be the thread connecting everything that needed to be summarized.