drethelin comments on Our Phyg Is Not Exclusive Enough - Less Wrong

25 [deleted] 14 April 2012 09:08PM

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Comment author: Username 14 April 2012 09:44:16PM 11 points [-]

I think the barrier of entry is high enough - the signal-to-noise ratio is high, and if you only read high-karma posts and comments you are guaranteed to get substance.

As for forcing people to read the entire Sequences, I'd say rationalwiki's critique is very appropriate (below). I myself have only read ~20% of the Sequences, and by focusing on the core sequences and highlighted articles, have recognized all the ideas/techniques people refer to in the main-page and discussion posts.

The "sequences"[9] are several collated series of Yudkowsky's blog posts, and there are eighteen sequences in all. The indexes for just the four "core sequences"[10] are somewhere north of 10,000 words. Those link to over a hundred and fifty 2,000-3,000-word blog posts. That's about 300,000-450,000 words for those four, and around a million words for the lot.[11] With a few million more words of often-relevant comments. For comparison, the Lord Of The Rings trilogy is 473,000 words.[12] As such, "You should try reading the sequences" is LessWrong for "fuck you."

Comment author: drethelin 15 April 2012 04:45:23PM 2 points [-]

It's not a barrier to entry if no one actually HAS to surmount it.

Comment author: Alsadius 15 April 2012 06:21:25PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, but if we make a policy of abusing and hounding out anyone who hasn't, it's not much better.