I've noticed something: the MIRI blog RSS feed doesn't update as a new article appears on the blog, but rather at certain times (two or three times a month?) it updates with the articles that have been published since the last update.

Does anyone know why this happens?

This is exciting and interesting stuff. A good one-sentence summary from the paper:

In sum, many experiences, particularly the more or less unpleasant sensations discussed here (e.g., effort, boredom, fatigue), can be profitably thought of as resulting from (1) monitoring mechanisms that tally opportunity costs, which (2) cause an aversive state that corresponds in magnitude to the cost computed, which (3) enters into decision-making, acting as a kind of "vote," influencing the decision ultimately taken.

I'm trying to get my head around ways I could use this to sustain better and longer levels of focus, reduce boredom, etc. Two questions come to mind, that as far as I can tell have not been investigated in detail yet, and to which I don't have answers:

1. What, exactly, are the sorts of things my brain decides are more important than what I'm currently doing? Is it things like "I'm not signaling the right things to the people around me", "need food", etc.?

2. What are good ways to "reset" my internal monitoring mechanisms and thus return to a non-aversive state? I presume the answer is some kind of reward or positive feedback?

Basically, is it possible to trick this internal cost-benefit analysis into being focused for long periods of time?

Diminishing returns. I'm glad I've played video games. I'm also glad I'm not currently playing video games.

Yes it depends on your goals. Don't construct your goals just to preclude learning, though; getting strong is very likely to be a good idea, thus arguments against it are very suspect.

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.

Do you have a list of blog posts that won't be in the book as a result?

On the one hand, I want to say "it's an ebook, stick them all in an appendix". On the other hand, the more slowly the progress bar at the bottom of the page moves the more readers are likely to give up. What can be left out should be.

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.

This seems to imply that the listed posts aren't part of the sequences, but several of the linked posts say they are part of a sequence, for example Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable says it it part of the QM sequence.

I can think of two possible primary goals for this project:

1. A prettier format for LWers to review the Sequences in, allowing easy full-text-search. A refresher and trophy.

2. A tidier, better-organized, more approachable update of the Sequences to introduce entirely new people to the ideas therein.

If the latter, brevity is a virtue. Every 50 pages longer the eBook gets probably takes a significant chunk out of how many people read any of it at all. So there's a lot of reason to excise everything unnecessary to an Appendix. And to shunt the Appendix off into a separate eBook of its own. ("The Out-Of-Sequences.")

An alternative (or complementary) solution is to divide the Sequences into several separate volumes, each no more than 250 pages long. Then you can be given the option either of downloading a single eBook that collects these volumes, or of downloading the separate eBooks and choosing a favorite one to send to a friend. Makes for a drastically less intimidating Christmas present.

Also, should “A Science-Based Case for Large-Scale Simulation” be cited on page 4?

Cool!

"Insais" on page 26 should probably be "insei."