handoflixue comments on Looking for alteration suggestions for the official Sequences ebook - Less Wrong

13 Post author: alexvermeer 16 October 2012 10:32PM

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Comment author: Dolores1984 17 October 2012 04:30:51PM *  2 points [-]

In general, when something can be either tremendously clever, or a bit foolish, the prior tends to the latter. Even with someone who's generally a pretty smart cookie. You could run the experiment, but I'm willing to bet on the outcome now.

It's important to remember that it isn't particularly useful for this book to be The Sequences. The Sequences are The Sequences, and the book can direct people to them. What would be more useful would be a condensed, rapid introduction to the field that tries to maximize insight-per-byte. Not something that's a definitive work on rationality, but something that people can crank through in a day or two, rave about to their friends, and come away with a better idea of what rational thinking looks like. It'd also serve as a less formidable introduction for those who are very interested, to the broader pool of work on the subject, including the Sequences. Dollar for sanity-waterline dollar, that's a very heavily leveraged position.

Actually, if CFAR isn't going to write that book, I will.

Comment author: handoflixue 17 October 2012 11:30:45PM -1 points [-]

Suggested title: The Tao of Bayes

Ideally it should not be significantly longer than "The Tao of Pooh"

I'd be half-tempted to try my hand at it myself...

Comment author: Dolores1984 18 October 2012 02:51:24AM 0 points [-]

So far, I'm twenty pages in, and getting close to being done with the basic epistemology stuff.