Gram_Stone comments on Rationality: From AI to Zombies - Less Wrong
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Comments (94)
Perhaps this is already discussed elsewhere and I'm failing at search. I'd be amazed if the below wasn't already pointed out.
On rereading this material it strikes me that this text is effectively inaccessible to large portions of the population. When I binged on these posts several years ago, I was just focused on the content for myself. This time, I had the thought to purchase for some others who would benefit from this material. I realized relatively quickly that the purchase of this book would likely fail to accomplish anything for these people, and may make a future attempt more difficult.
I think many of my specific concerns apply to a large percentage of the population.
Eliezer and Robb have done a lot to get the material into book state... but it's preaching to the choir.
Specifically what I think would make this more accessible:
Is there any ongoing attempt or desire to do a group edit of this into an 'Accessible Rationality'?
I've had similar concerns and I agree with a lot of this.
If we really want to approach a 7th grade reading level, then we had better aim for kindergartners. I remember reading through the book trying to imagine how to bring it down several levels and thinking about just how many words I was taking for granted as a high-IQ adult who has had plenty of time to just passively soak up vocabulary and overviews of highly complex fields. I just don't think we're there yet; I think that's why there are things like SPARC where we're trying it out on highly intelligent high school students who are unusually well-educated for their age.
To my knowledge this is already a priority.
I find that there's a wide disparity between LW users in intelligence and education, and I don't know if I see a wiki-like approach converging on anything particularly useful. I would imagine arguments about what's not simple enough and what's not complex enough, and about people using examples from their pet fields that others don't understand. It might work if you threw enough bodies at it, like Wikipedia, but we don't have that many bodies. I don't know how others feel.
The point wasn't to aim for 7th graders, but a 7th grade level which would make it generally accessible to busy adults.
See Mark's post regarding 7th grade; my intention was aimed at adults, who (for whatever reason) seem to like the 7th grade reading level.
I'm not sure how to effectively crowd source this without getting volunteers for specific (non-overlapping) tasks and sections. I share your concern with the wiki-method, unless each section has a lead. At work we regularly get 20 people to collaborate on ~100 page proposals, but the same incentives aren't available in this case. Copyediting is time consuming and unexciting; does anyone know of similar crowd sourced efforts? I found a few but most still had paid writers.