The Arrow of Time
Gary Drescher dissolves this old mystery in one chapter of "Good and Real". Amazing. I must have read a dozen pop science books that discuss this problem, analyze some proposed solutions, and then leave it as a mystery. Drescher crushes it.
This may not fit in one posting, but it might well fit in a sequence of four or so.
Believe it or not, I actually started an article on this around "17 October 2009" (per the date stamp) and never finished it. (I actually had the more ambitious idea of summarizing every chapter in one article, but figured Chapter 3 would be enough.) Might as well post what I have (formatting and links don't carry over; I've corrected the worst issues) ...
Here I attempt to summarize the points laid out in Gary Drescher's Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (discussed previously on Less Wrong), chapter 3, which explore...
Less Wrong is a large community of very smart people with a wide spectrum of expertise, and I think relatively little of that value has been tapped.
Like my post The Best Textbooks on Every Subject, this is meant to be a community-driven post. The first goal is to identify topics the Less Wrong community would like to read more about. The second goal is to encourage Less Wrongers to write on those topics. (Respecting, of course, the implicit and fuzzy guidelines for what should be posted to Less Wrong.)
One problem is that those with expertise on a subject don't necessarily feel competent to write a front-page post on it. If that's the case, please comment here explaining that you might be able to write one of the requested posts, but you'd like a writing collaborator. We'll try to find you one.
Rules
You may either:
or...
I will regularly update the list of suggested Less Wrong posts, ranking them in descending order of votes (like this).
The List So Far (updated 02/11/11)