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Nornagest comments on Yes, a blog. - Less Wrong
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Comments (106)
And this is precisely why I haven't lost all hope for the future. (That, and we've got some really bright people working furiously on reducing x-risk.) On rare occasions, humanity impresses me. I could write sonnets about Wikipedia. And I hate when so-called educators try to imply Wikipedia is low status or somehow making us dumber. It's the kind of conclusion that the Gatekeepers of Knowledge wish was accurate. How can you possibly get access to that kind of information without paying your dues? It's just immoral.
I pose this question: if you had to pick just one essay to introduce someone to LW, which one would you pick and why? I'd like to spread access to the information in the sequences so that it can benefit others as it did me, but I'm at a loss as to where specifically to start. Just tossing a link to the list of sequences is.....overwhelming, to say the least. And I've been perusing them for so long that I can't remember what it's like to read with fresh eyes, and the essays that have the most impact on me now were incomprehensible to me a year ago, I think.
Interesting question.
I've forgotten which page convinced me to start reading this site in earnest. It might have been "Generalization from Fictional Evidence", which is excellent, but that served a rather specific purpose for me and I'm not sure it'd do the same for others.
Looking over some of the sequences now, I think "Positive Bias: Look Into The Dark" might have the right balance of accessible and mind-blowing to hook a layman of no more than average mathematical sophistication. The 2-4-6 task is one of the more elegant ways of demonstrating both bias and possible countermeasures that I've encountered here.