One metric that could be calculated automatically: how many articles in the book contain hyperlinks to the articles that appear later in the book, or don't appear in the book?
I guess we should try to make that number as small as possible, for convenient linear reading, but of course it has to be balanced against other concerns (such as keeping articles with similar topics together, so we can make chapters with a unified topic).
Another idea: identify the main topics of the book (they roughly correspond to the chapters you have now: "map and territory", "words", "politics", "reductionism", "quantum physics", "metaethics", "community", etc.), and mark each article with the corresponding tags.
The goal of this is to reduce the cognitive load while sorting the chapters. Instead of thinking "what was the Fake Morality article about, again?" (and trying to keep all those articles in your head), reduce all chapters to a short information: article name (or identifiers), article tags, names of referenced articles. And then only use this information to sort the articles. -- Perhaps by describing every articles in one line of a text file, easily moving them around in the text editor, and calculating the "non-backwards hyperlinks" metric automatically.
One metric that could be calculated automatically: how many articles in the book contain hyperlinks to the articles that appear later in the book,
I like this idea!
or don't appear in the book?
That's the list at the end of the OP.
MIRI's ongoing effort to publish the sequences as an eBook has given us the opportunity to update their contents and organization.
We're looking for suggested posts to reorder, add, or remove.
To help with this, here is a breakdown of the current planned contents of the eBook and any currently planned modifications. Following that is a list of the most popular links within the sequences to posts that are not included therein.
Now's a good time to suggested changes or improvements!
———
Map and Territory
Added …What's a Bias Again? because it's meant to immediately follow Why Truth, And….
Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
No changes.
A Human's Guide to Words
No changes.
How to Actually Change Your Mind
Politics is the Mind-Killer
Removed The Robbers Cave Experiment because it already appears in Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor, and there in the original chronological order which flows better.
Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor
Removed The Litany Against Gurus because it already appears in Politics is the Mind-killer.
Seeing with Fresh Eyes
Removed Asch's Conformity Experiment and Lonely Dissent because they both appear at the end of Death Spirals. Removed The Genetic Fallacy because it's in the Metaethics sequence: that's where it falls chronologically and it fits better there with the surrounding posts.
Noticing Confusion
Removed this entire subsequence because it is entirely contained within Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions.
Against Rationalization
Added Pascal's Mugging (before Torture vs Dust Specks) because it explains the 3^^^3 notation. Added Torture vs Dust Specks before A Case Study of Motivated Continuation because A Case Study refers to it frequently.
Against Doublethink
No changes.
Overly Convenient Excuses
Removed How to Convince Me that 2+2=3 because it's already in Map & Territory.
Letting Go
No change.
The Simple Math of Evolution
Added Evolutionary Psychology because it fits nicely at the end and it's referred to by other posts many times.
Challenging the Difficult
No change.
Yudkowsky's Coming of Age
No change.
Reductionism
No change. (Includes the Zombies subsequence.)
Quantum Physics
No change. Doesn't include any "Preliminaries" posts, since they'd all be duplicates
Metaethics
No change.
Fun Theory
No change.
The Craft and the Community
No change.
Appendix
Includes:
———
Here are the most-frequently-referenced links within the sequences to posts outside of the sequences (with a count of three or more). This may help you notice posts that you think should be included in the sequences eBook.
Suggestions?