No, for several reasons (drawn from experiences in math, I am sure in physics and other sciences it is even worse):
Even if one includes hidden download-sites and special access by university subscriptions, only sources at the low or medium levels are available in a sufficient amount. The contents of an advanced level are only insufficient there, even some of the decades old and basic ones.
Suitable and really good existing texts on the web can be found only if one knows very precisely what one is looking for. But someone who wants to learn needs to find the better stuff, which is in part outside his/her mental frame. In contrast, good texts, even if found, still become hard to detect because of the noise by shallow pseudo-substitutes.
Browsing a real library makes your brain detect very quickly much more information and orientation, e.g. experiments (by friends who tutor at the local university) with beginning university students who were grouped and then asked to look for literature (in physics) by web/library only, for an hour, showed a very huge difference. An other experiment with students showed that students using a library have much better learning techniques that the other, but the later don't notice. Maybe it is a special case of this. On the interesting ways of how subconscious learning and "active" memory gets connected by seemingly irrelevant sensory inputs may play a role then, a famous extreme case here.
Even if one includes hidden download-sites and special access by university subscriptions, only sources at the low or medium levels are available in a sufficient amount.
How advanced are you referring to? There are many resources at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level (this is biased towards computer science and math, so maybe this is not true for the sciences):
This is a link to a freely available 4-volume set on measure theory
Here is a book on information-theoretic approaches to machine learning and inference
If this post is inappropriate, I apologize.
I stumbled upon this site after reading "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". The story so far has really moved me on multiple levels and sent me here in a quest to learn more about rationality as a philosophy/way of thinking about the world. I have read Ayn Rands published works and loved the stories and most of the message. The characters always seemed like titans that were far and above me, but now, I've seen a character that is a bit more approachable.
I've started to go through the "Map and Territory" section of the "Core Sequences" and this whole project and community makes me ecstatic. I'm currently working my way through the Bayes's Theorem article with some success. The more I read, the more I realize I may have a problem.
I'm pretty dumb.
Is higher level reasoning "use it or lose it" ? I like learning new things and love reading but any new ideas require a ton of thought and re-reading. I think I have enough interest to keep plugging away at it, but I'm not sure I'm going at things the right way. Is there a "Kid's Table" for lesswrong.com?
For "Priors": I'm 28 years old, white male, married, no children, poor economic upbringing, solid emotional upbringing, currently lower to middle class, high school diploma, US Navy, currently a civilian electronics technician, raised Baptist currently Agnostic/Atheist (recently).
I guess that's it. Thanks!
--John