Some Morals from the Study of Human Irrationality [Link]

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Luke Muehlhauser posted a selection of the “morals” from Stuart Sutherland’s Irrationality.

Link: commonsenseatheism.com/?p=13556

I was wondering if the same could be done for the Sequences and if it would be a good idea or rather hold people off from reading them at full length.

Is it even possible to summarize each post in one sentence? An example would be Belief in the Implied Invisible which could be summarized by a quote from the post Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable:

If P(Y|X) ≈ 1, then P(X∧Y) ≈ P(X). Which is to say, believing extra details doesn't cost you extra probability when they are logical implications of general beliefs you already have.

One could then compile a quote paper and cite the accompanying posts. As Luke wrote, "If you want to know his reasons for giving all this advice, read the book."

Luke Muehlhauser posted a selection of the “morals” from Stuart Sutherland’s Irrationality.

Link: commonsenseatheism.com/?p=13556

I was wondering if the same could be done for the Sequences and if it would be a good idea or rather hold people off from reading them at full length.

If P(Y|X) ≈ 1, then P(X∧Y) ≈ P(X). Which is to say, believing extra details doesn't cost you extra probability when they are logical implications of general beliefs you already have.

One could then compile a quote paper and cite the accompanying posts. As Luke wrote, "If you want to know his reasons for giving all this advice, read the book."

Oh, lots.

Drescher's Good and Real presupposes most of what the Sequences explain, and applies Less Wrongian thinking to specific problems in physics and philosophy. The most overlap is probably between Drescher's and Eliezer's discussions of QM.

Sutherland's Irrationality is a pretty good survey of heuristics and biases, but that's only one of the main topics at LW.

I don't know what a third book of my choice would be, since I don't know what the criteria are, but I don't know of any book that covers the material in the Sequences that isn't covered by Good and Real and Irrationality.

I'm an incredible slow reader with no formal education. I'm trying to figure out what I should learn and refine it as much as possible. I'd rather not read a book of marginal importance, otherwise I'll need a decade before I stumble upon the gist of the matter. I thought asking someone like you, someone who is reading the sequences and reviewing a lot of books, who would be able to point out if there is some redundancy here to spare. I think to remember Yudkowsky saying that Good and Real is basically LW in book form. That's why I asked. The third book I h... (read more)