Note 1: I'm not very serious about the second part of the title, I just thought it sounds more catchy. I'm a long time lurker writing here for the first time, and it's not my intention to alienate anyone. Also, hi, nice to meet you. Please leave a comment to achieve a result of making me happy about you having left a comment. But let's get to the point.

I think you might be familiar with TED Talks. Recall the last time you watched one, and how you felt while doing it.

[BZRT BZRT sound of imagination working]

In my case, I often got the feeling like if I was learning something valuable while watching most TED Talks. The speakers are (mostly) obviously passionate and intelligent people, speaking about important matters they care about a lot. (Granted, I probably haven't watched more than a dozen TED Talks in all my life, so my sample is quite small, but I think it isn't very unrepresentative.)

But at some point, I started asking myself afterwards:

So, what have I actually learned?

Which translates in my internal dialect to:

For each major point, give a one-sentence summary and at least one example of how I could apply it.

(Note 2: don't treat this "one sentence summary" thing too strictly - of course it's only a reflex/shorthand that is useful in many situations, but not all. I like it because it's simple enough that it's installable as a subconscious trigger-action.)

And I could not state afterwards anything actually useful that I have learned from those "fascinating" videos (with at most one or two small exceptions).

This is exactly what I mean by "Education as Entertainment".

It's getting the enjoyable *feeling* of learning without any real progress.

[DUM DUM DUM sound of increasing dramatism]

And now, what if you use this concept to look at rationality materials?

For me, reading the core Eliezer's braindump (basically the content of "From AI to Zombies"), as well as braindumps (in the form of blogs) of several other people from the LW community, had definite learning value.

I take notes when I read those, and I have an accountability system in place that enables me to make sure I follow up on all the advice I give to myself, test the new ideas, and improve/drop/replace/implement as needed.

However, when I read (a significant part of) the content produced by the "modern" community-powered-LessWrong, I classify its actual learning value at around the same level as TED Talks.

Or YouTube videos with cats, only those don't give me the *impression* that I'm learning something.

THE END

Please let me know what you think.

Final Note: Please take my remarks with a grain of salt. What I write is meant to inspire thoughts in you, not to represent my best factual knowledge about the LW community.

http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are

Artificial intelligence is getting smarter by leaps and bounds — within this century, research suggests, a computer AI could be as "smart" as a human being. And then, says Nick Bostrom, it will overtake us: "Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make." A philosopher and technologist, Bostrom asks us to think hard about the world we're building right now, driven by thinking machines. Will our smart machines help to preserve humanity and our values — or will they have values of their own?

I realize this might go into a post in a media thread, rather than its own topic, but it seems big enough, and likely-to-prompt-discussion enough, to have its own thread.

I liked the talk, although it was less polished than TED talks often are. What was missing I think was any indication of how to solve the problem. He could be seen as just an ivory tower philosopher speculating on something that might be a problem one day, because apart from mentioning in the beginning that he works with mathematicians and IT guys, he really does not give an impression that this problem is already being actively worked on.

Diego Caleiro, a past SI visiting fellow and current leader of a transhumanist institution in Brazil, recently delivered this TED@SaoPaulo talk on Friendly AI and Effective Altruism. If it goes viral, it has a chance to be selected for TED Global. (The importance thing is to have lots of positive comments on the TED page, methinks.) TED Global's talks reach on average 40,000 viewers within the first 24 hours, and 500,000 within half a year.

Check it out, share, and especially: comment!

TED has launched a new initiative: TED Education

TED-Ed's mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. We do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library of curiosity-igniting videos.

http://education.ted.com/

So maybe we could get someone to do a short talk/lecture on rationality related topic(s) (maybe cognitive biases?)? Or anything else that is related to raising the sanity waterline. Or at least just suggest the idea.