Which LW / rationalist blog posts aren't covered by my books & courses?
I've read a few of the Sequences (probably about 50-100 individual posts), but I've only occasionally come away with insights and perspectives that I hadn't already thought of or read elsewhere. I've read a bunch of the popular books on cognitive science and decision theory, including everything on the CFAR popular books list. I'm also about to start an undergrad in statistics with a minor (or possibly a second major) in philosophy.
My question is: Are there specific LW posts / Sequences / other rationalist blog posts that I should read that won't be covered by standard statistics and philosophy courses, or by the books on CFAR's popular reading lists?
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Comments (9)
Slightly off from what you asked, but the CFAR list looks suboptimal. I would add The Invisible Gorilla (And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us) by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. It is more thorough and more generally applicable than Predictably Irrational.
If people have other recommendations for books that are better than (or highly complementary to) the books on the CFAR lists, I would be interested in hearing them.
Some career advice: skip the philosophy minor. Minors are only worth it if they're related to an area you're considering for grad school. Biology or math minors give you a lot of options although not math in your case obviously. If you want to take those classes as electives and just end up with it then fine, but don't go into it planning on doing extra coursework because you think the minor will help you; it won't.
That’s actually a tough question because Elizer/others tend to use new names for existing ideas. For example, 'the fallacy of the grey' instead of 'the continuum fallacy', so I am not entirely sure what concepts have been covered elsewhere. Also, I think a lot of the value from less wrong posts comes from them getting you to think about an idea that you may not otherwise have thought to look deeply into even though technically it may have been in the books you have read. For example, I would never have looked into kent berridges work on wanting and liking if I hadn’t read luke prog’s post on it.
The below list contains some of the concepts that I don't think are covered elsewhere. You can also go through the wikis since you should know what topics you have already learnt:
Some more:
I'd recommend reading the academic books that CFAR lists, that will get you further than reading more blog posts, or more popular books.
That's missing the point of this question, which is "if I read all the academic books on CFAR's list, are there blog posts that contain things I will not have seen in the books?"
That's not how I read it. It seems to me that it was only talking about the popular books, not the academic books.
to be fair, iawain1 never mention the academic books list.
You are correct; thanks for pointing that out. I had forgotten that they had two separate lists.