When I was a student at Fullstack Academy, a coding bootcamp, they had us all do this (mapping it to the control key), along with a few other changes to such settings like making the key repeat rate faster. I think I got this script from them.

My instinct is that it's not the type of thing to hack at with workarounds without buy in from the LW team.

If there was buy in from them I expect that it wouldn't be much effort to add some sort of functionality. At least not for a version one; iterating on it could definitely take time, but you could hold off on spending that time iterating if there isn't enough interest, so the initial investment wouldn't be high effort.

I think this is a great idea, at least in the distillation aspect.

Thanks!

Having briefer statements of the most important posts would be very useful in growing the rationalist community.

I think you're right, but I think it's also important to think about dilution. Making things lower-effort and more appealing to the masses brings down the walls of the garden, which "dilutes" things inside the garden.

But I'm just saying that this is a consideration. And there are lots of considerations. I feel confused about how to enumerate through them, weigh them, and figure out which way the arrow points: towards being more appealing to the masses or less appealing. I know I probably indicated that I lean towards the former when I talked about "summaries, analyses and distillations" in my OP, but I want to clarify that I feel very uncertain and if anything probably lean towards the latter.

But even if we did want to focus on having taller walls, I think the "more is possible" point that I was ultimately trying to gesture at in my OP still stands. It's just that the "more" part might mean things like coming up with things like higher quality explanations, more and better examples of what the post is describing, knowledge checks, and exercises.

Since we don't currently have that list of distilled posts (AFAIK - anyone?)

There is the Sequence Highlights which has an estimated reading time of eight hours.

Sometimes when I'm reading old blog posts on LessWrong, like old Sequence posts, I have something that I want to write up as a comment, and I'm never sure where to write that comment.

I could write it on the original post, but if I do that it's unlikely to be seen and to generate conversation. Alternatively, I could write it on my Shortform or on the Open Thread. That would get a reasonable amount of visibility, but... I dunno... something feels defect-y and uncooperative about that for some reason.

I guess what's driving that feeling is probably the thought that in a perfect world conversations about posts would happen in the comments section of the post, and by posting elsewhere I'm contributing to the problem.

But now that I write that out I'm feeling like that's a bit silly thought. Fixing the problem would take a larger concentration of force than just me posting a few comments on old Sequence posts once in a while. By me posting my comments in the comments sections of the corresponding post, I'm not really moving the needle. So I don't think I endorse any feelings of guilt here.

I would like to see people write high-effort summaries, analyses and distillations of the posts in The Sequences.

When Eliezer wrote the original posts, he was writing one blog post a day for two years. Surely you could do a better job presenting the content that he produced in one day if you, say, took four months applying principles of pedagogy and iterating on it as a side project. I get the sense that more is possible.

This seems like a particularly good project for people who want to write but don't know what to write about. I've talked with a variety of people who are in that boat.

One issue with such distillation posts is discoverability. Maybe you write the post, it receives some upvotes, some people see it, and then it disappears into the ether. Ideally when someone in the future goes to read the corresponding sequence post they would be aware that your distillation post is available as a sort of sister content to the original content. LessWrong does have the "Mentioned in" section at the bottom of posts, but that doesn't feel like it is sufficient.

I recently started going through some of Rationality from AI to Zombies again. A big reason why is the fact that there are audio recordings of the posts. It's easy to listen to a post or two as I walk my dog, or a handful of posts instead of some random hour-long podcast that I would otherwise listen to.

I originally read (most of) The Sequences maybe 13 or 14 years ago when I was in college. At various times since then I've made somewhat deliberate efforts to revisit them. Other times I've re-read random posts as opposed to larger collections of posts. Anyway, the point I want to make is that it's been a while.

I've been a little surprised in my feelings as I re-read them. Some of them feel notably less good than what I remember. Others blow my mind and are incredible.

The Mysterious Answers sequence is one that I felt disappointed by. I felt like the posts weren't very clear and that there wasn't much substance. I think the main overarching point of the sequence is that an explanation can't say that all outcomes are equally probable. It has to say that some outcomes are more probable than others. But that just seems kinda obvious.

I think it's quite plausible that there are "good" reasons why I felt disappointed as I re-read this and other sequences. Maybe there are important things that are going over my head. Or maybe I actually understand things too well now after hanging around this community for so long.

One post that hit me kinda hard that I really enjoyed after re-reading it was Rationality and the English Language, and then the follow up post, Human Evil and Muddled Thinking. The posts helped me grok how powerful language can be.

If you really want an artist’s perspective on rationality, then read Orwell; he is mandatory reading for rationalists as well as authors. Orwell was not a scientist, but a writer; his tools were not numbers, but words; his adversary was not Nature, but human evil. If you wish to imprison people for years without trial, you must think of some other way to say it than “I’m going to imprison Mr. Jennings for years without trial.” You must muddy the listener’s thinking, prevent clear images from outraging conscience. You say, “Unreliable elements were subjected to an alternative justice process.”

I'm pretty sure that I read those posts before, along with a bunch of related posts and stuff, but for whatever reason the re-read still meaningfully improved my understand the concept.

I assume you mean wearing a helmet while being in a car to reduce the risk of car related injuries and deaths. I actually looked into this and from what I remember, helmets do more harm than good. They have the benefit of protecting you from hitting your head against something but the issue with accidents comes much moreso from the whiplash, and by adding more weight to (the top of) your head, helmets have the cost of making whiplash worse, and this cost outweighs the benefits by a fair amount.

Yes! I've always been a huge believer in this idea that the ease of eating a food is important and underrated. Very underrated.

I'm reminded of this clip of Anthony Bourdain talking about burgers and how people often put slices of bacon on a burger, but that in doing so it makes the burger difficult to eat. Presumably because when you go to take a bite you the whole slice of bacon often ends up sliding off the burger.

Am I making this more enjoyable by adding bacon? Maybe. How should that bacon be introduced into the question? It's an engineer and structural problem as much as it is a flavor experience. You really have to consider all of those things. One of the greatest sins in "burgerdom" I think is making a burger that's just difficult to eat.

I've noticed that there's a pretty big difference in the discussion that follows from me showing someone a draft of a post and asking for comments and the discussion in the comments section after I publish a post. The former is richer and more enjoyable whereas the latter doesn't usually result in much back and forth. And I get the sense that this is true for other authors as well.

I guess one important thing might be that with drafts, you're talking to people who you know. But I actually don't suspect that this plays much of a role, at least on LessWrong. As an anecdote, I've had some incredible conversations with the guy who reviews drafts of posts on LessWrong for free and I had never talked to him previously.

I wonder what it is about drafts. I wonder if it can or should be incorporated into regular posts.

Thanks Marvin! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the post and that it was helpful.

Imho your post should be linked to all definitions of the sunk cost fallacy.

I actually think the issue was more akin to the planning fallacy. Like when I'd think to myself "another two months to build this feature and then things will be good", it wasn't so much that I was compelled because of the time I had sunk into the journey, it was more that I genuinely anticipated that the results would be better than they actually were.