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Literature Review For Academic Outsiders: What, How, and Why

A few years ago I wrote a comment on LessWrong about how most authors on the site probably don't know how to do a literature review: > On the one hand, I too resent that LW is basically an insight porn factory near completely devoid of scholarship. > > On the other hand, this is not a useful comment. I can think of at least two things you could have done to make this a useful comment: > > Specified even a general direction of where you feel the body of economic literature could have been engaged. I know you might resent doing someone elses research for them if you’re not already familiar with said body, but frankly the norm right now is to post webs spun from the fibrous extrusions of peoples musing thoughts. The system equilibrium isn’t going to change unless some effort is invested into moving it. Notice you could write your comment on most posts while only changing a few words. > Provide advice on how one might go about engaging with ‘the body of economic literature’. Many people are intelligent and reasonably well informed, but not academics. Taking this as an excuse to mark them swamp creatures beyond assistance is both lazy and makes the world worse. You could even link to reasonably well written guides from someone else if you don’t want to invest the effort (entirely understandable). I also linked a guide from Harvard's library (Garson & Lillvick, 2012) on how to do a literature review. But this guide makes extensive use of flash video, which makes it increasingly hard to access the content. Even if flash was alive and well, video is not necessarily the most comfortable format. Worse still, I remember feeling there was a great deal of tacit knowledge excluded from the guide which wouldn't be apparent to someone that isn't already familiar with academic culture. Even if the guide was a perfect representation of how to do an academic literature review, the priorities and types of work put together by LessWrong authors are more outsider science (Dance, 200

196May 9, 2020

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A History Of Universalist Greed

[Special thanks to Ratheka Stormbjorne and Shiloh Miyazaki for doing some of the research for this essay. All opinions expressed are my own however.] In my essay on Fuzzies and Saddies I wrote about four components that were necessary to implement "Eliezer's version of extropy": > 1. High future shock....

Jun 4, 202056

Literature Review For Academic Outsiders: What, How, and Why

May 9, 2020196

Necessity and Warrant

> Literary warrant, a concept introduced by Wyndam Hulme in 1911, has the status of a principle. A subprinciple of the principle of representation, it enjoins that the vocabulary of a subject language be empirically derived from the literature it is intended to describe. This means that a literature must...

Apr 1, 202027

"Memento Mori", Said The Confessor

Abstract The fear of death acts as a sort of master key for introductory rationality concepts. Examining the fear of death ties all the rationality basics together into a coherent framework, including: * Map/Territory Errors * Something To Protect * Keeping Your Identity Small * Atheism * X-Risk Read more...

Feb 2, 202034

Litany Against Anger

The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing. My anger is not the trigger, triggers do not become more or less important as I feel anger wax and wane. Emotions are motivation, they're supposed to get me to do the right thing. Defuse from my frustration,...

Jan 25, 202013

How was your decade?

Hi everybody, With the New Year coming up and next year being 2020, I think it's worth reflecting on the last 10 years. As you probably remember the last Sequences post came out towards the end of the decade. How have things gone for you since then? If you're willing...

Dec 28, 201926

1987 Sci-Fi Authors Timecapsule Predictions For 2012

I find it interesting how focused people were on certain trends such as venereal disease, which turned out almost irrelevant just 25 years later as drivers of global norms. Of the set I think Algis Budrys wins Most Accurate: > Because we will be in a trough between 20th-century resources...

Dec 28, 201820

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Literature Review For Academic Outsiders: What, How, and Why

Debate Rules In Benjamin Franklin's Junto

A History Of Universalist Greed

2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Results

namespace

A History Of Universalist Greed

Literature Review For Academic Outsiders: What, How, and Why

Necessity and Warrant

"Memento Mori", Said The Confessor

Litany Against Anger

How was your decade?

1987 Sci-Fi Authors Timecapsule Predictions For 2012

Literature Review For Academic Outsiders: What, How, and Why

Debate Rules In Benjamin Franklin's Junto

A History Of Universalist Greed

2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Results

A History Of Universalist Greed

Literature Review For Academic Outsiders: What, How, and Why

Necessity and Warrant

"Memento Mori", Said The Confessor

Litany Against Anger

How was your decade?

1987 Sci-Fi Authors Timecapsule Predictions For 2012