Help us Optimize the Contents of the Sequences eBook

lukeprog

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.

Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality => 24
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition => 22
Terminal Values and Instrumental Values => 16
Burdensome Details => 16
Expecting Short Inferential Distances => 15
Thou Art Godshatter => 14
Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable => 14
Scope Insensitivity => 13
The Ultimate Source => 13
No One Knows What Science Doesn't Know => 12
The Design Space of Minds-In-General => 11
Think Like Reality => 10
Passing the Recursive Buck => 9
Lost Purposes => 9
The Hidden Complexity of Wishes => 9
Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence => 9
A Priori => 8
Beautiful Probability => 8
Possibility and Could-ness => 8
Why is the Future So Absurd? => 8
Fake Utility Functions => 8
Availability => 7
Ghosts in the Machine => 7
Nonsentient Optimizers => 7
Fake Fake Utility Functions => 7
Searching for Bayes-Structure => 7
Outside the Laboratory => 7
Dreams of AI Design => 6
Surface Analogies and Deep Causes => 6
Artificial Addition => 6
Not for the Sake of Happiness (Alone) => 6
Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization => 5
Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable => 5
The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem => 5
Can't Unbirth a Child => 5
The Psychological Unity of Humankind => 5
Humans in Funny Suits => 5
Rationality is Systematized Winning => 5
The True Prisoner's Dilemma => 5
Zen and the Art of Rationality => 5
The "Intuitions" Behind "Utilitarianism" => 5
For The People Who Are Still Alive => 4
The Two-Party Swindle => 4
Conjunction Fallacy => 4
Anthropomorphic Optimism => 4
The Modesty Argument => 4
Rational evidence => 4
Priors as Mathematical Objects => 4
The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet/ => 4
I Defy the Data! => 4
Bystander Apathy => 3
We Don't Really Want Your Participation => 3
You Only Live Twice => 3
Lawful Creativity => 3
One Life Against the World => 3
Locate the hypothesis => 3
Cynical About Cynicism => 3
Optimization => 3
Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You => 3
Detached Lever Fallacy => 3
Circular Altruism => 3
The Allais Paradox => 3
The Martial Art of Rationality => 3
Fake Morality => 3

Suggestions?

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.

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

Noticing Confusion

Removed this entire subsequence because it is entirely contained within Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions.

Against Rationalization

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:

———

Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality => 24
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition => 22
Terminal Values and Instrumental Values => 16
Burdensome Details => 16
Expecting Short Inferential Distances => 15
Thou Art Godshatter => 14
Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable => 14
Scope Insensitivity => 13
The Ultimate Source => 13
No One Knows What Science Doesn't Know => 12
The Design Space of Minds-In-General => 11
Think Like Reality => 10
Passing the Recursive Buck => 9
Lost Purposes => 9
The Hidden Complexity of Wishes => 9
Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence => 9
A Priori => 8
Beautiful Probability => 8
Possibility and Could-ness => 8
Why is the Future So Absurd? => 8
Fake Utility Functions => 8
Availability => 7
Ghosts in the Machine => 7
Nonsentient Optimizers => 7
Fake Fake Utility Functions => 7
Searching for Bayes-Structure => 7
Outside the Laboratory => 7
Dreams of AI Design => 6
Surface Analogies and Deep Causes => 6
Artificial Addition => 6
Not for the Sake of Happiness (Alone) => 6
Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization => 5
Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable => 5
The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem => 5
Can't Unbirth a Child => 5
The Psychological Unity of Humankind => 5
Humans in Funny Suits => 5
Rationality is Systematized Winning => 5
The True Prisoner's Dilemma => 5
Zen and the Art of Rationality => 5
The "Intuitions" Behind "Utilitarianism" => 5
For The People Who Are Still Alive => 4
The Two-Party Swindle => 4
Conjunction Fallacy => 4
Anthropomorphic Optimism => 4
The Modesty Argument => 4
Rational evidence => 4
Priors as Mathematical Objects => 4
The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet/ => 4
I Defy the Data! => 4
Bystander Apathy => 3
We Don't Really Want Your Participation => 3
You Only Live Twice => 3
Lawful Creativity => 3
One Life Against the World => 3
Locate the hypothesis => 3
Cynical About Cynicism => 3
Optimization => 3
Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You => 3
Detached Lever Fallacy => 3
Circular Altruism => 3
The Allais Paradox => 3
The Martial Art of Rationality => 3
Fake Morality => 3

Suggestions?

Luke, Alex: After reading through most of Eliezer's 2006-2009 posts over the last 3 days, I suggest including in the eBook all the out-of-sequence articles you listed, except:

The Cartoon Guide to Löb's Theorem
Conjunction Fallacy (summarized adequately in lots of other articles, especially Burdensome details)
Cynical About Cynicism
Fake Fake Utility Functions
For The People Who Are Still Alive
Locate the hypothesis
The Martial Art of Rationality
The Modesty Argument
No One Knows What Science Doesn't Know
Optimization
Passing the Recursive Buck
Possibility and Could-ness
Priors as Mathematical Objects
Rational evidence
Rationality is Systematized Winning (don't need a whole article for this; to the extent it isn't just a recap of the Newcomb's Problem article, the point can be made in one sentence in the Introduction, or in a slightly edited What do I mean by rationality? and/or Incremental progress and the valley)
Surface Analogies and Deep Causes
The Two-Party Swindle (interesting but not essential, and copy-pastes content from other pages)
The Ultimate Source
The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet (this and Akrasia and Shangri-La are both too specific to be good core sequence candidates; their message is better covered in Beware of other-optimizing)
We Don't Really Want Your Participation
Why is the Future So Absurd? (use Stranger than history instead; showing is more powerful than telling)
You Only Live Twice (already in the FOOM eBook)
Zen and the Art of Rationality

From what I can tell, all the links to those pages within the Sequences are minor passing mentions, and their contents aren't particularly valuable for understanding the core content of the Sequences. Understanding Free Will, for instance, isn't needed for the rest of the Sequences, and EY actively discourages just copy-pasting his answer here.

I note that about 25 of the posts from the Quantum Mechanics / Timeless Physics sequence also aren't necessary for understanding the rest of the Sequences, differ in tone in interesting ways (they remind me of 2010-2013 Eliezer), and make the QM section look a heck of a lot more intimidating than it needs to. They also need new images to replace the quick pencil drawings, so I suggest leaving out the more technical stuff and then consolidating all the QM posts in a future eBook, once the images are polished up.

I can also suggest places to integrate the new additions that will make it possible to read the entire Sequences eBook from front to back without doing any hopping around. It doesn't take very much reshuffling to make the dependencies work sequentially in the Sequences.

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Appendix

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Appendix

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