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SilasBarta comments on Yes, a blog. - Less Wrong
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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.
I seem to be alone in this, but I'd say Truly Part of You is far and away the best one-article summary of the site. Unfortunately, it's not listed as part of the sequences. For me, though, it's the one that gave me the "click" and made me appreciate rationality on a gut level.
This seems to demonstrate that 'sequences' represents an element of lost purpose. The point of having the sequences compilation and the link to it is not so much to collect posts on a topic that is covered in multiple parts but to compile all the fundamental high quality posts, particularly the early OB ones by Eliezer. Or if not the original purpose of the wiki page then certainly the role that it now takes is not just to collect things that are multi-part.
If you edited that wiki page, perhaps adding an extra category for standalone posts then I would be surprised (and probably disgusted!) if anyone strongly objected. That post belongs there. Particularly since it is part of what was one big sequence. After all in the past the collation has been in the form of a graph based on 'follow up' links. And that post has two of them!