Hello! Welcome to the forum, I hope you make yourself at home.
...you would be justified in requiring first some short and convincing expository work with the core arguments and ideas to see if they look sufficiently appealing and worth engaging in. Is there something of the kind for Rationalism?
In this comment Hauke Hillebrandt linked this essay of Holden Karnofsky’s: The Bayesian Mindset. It’s about a half-hour read and I think it’s a really good explainer.
Putanumonit has their own introduction to rationality—it’s less explicitly Bayesian, and somewhat more a paean to what Karnofsky calls “[emphasizing] various ideas and mental habits that are inspired by the abstract idea of [expected utility maximization]”: The Path to Reason
Some “rationality in action” type posts from a variety of authors, to demonstrate what it looks like when people try to use the Bayesian mindset (these posts are all Real Hipster, written by contrarians who were subsequently proven correct by common consensus; the purpose of rationality is to be as correct as possible as quickly as possible).
Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others: 8 minute read, about efficient charity (written before “effective altruism” was a term and some years before the Centre for Effective Altruism existed)
Seeing the Smoke: a post about Covid-19, written in February of 2020
Many people stand by The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef (though I haven’t myself read it) (here’s a book review of it that you can read to decide whether you want to buy or borrow the book). I don’t know how many pages long it is exactly but am 85% sure it falls in your range.
On the nightstand next to me is Replacing Guilt by Nate Soares—it’s 202 pages long and they are all of them great. You can find much of the material online here, you could give the first few chapters a glance-through to see if you like them.
I’m interested to see which books other people recommend!
Hello! Welcome to the forum, I hope you make yourself at home.
In this comment Hauke Hillebrandt linked this essay of Holden Karnofsky’s: The Bayesian Mindset. It’s about a half-hour read and I think it’s a really good explainer.
Putanumonit has their own introduction to rationality—it’s less explicitly Bayesian, and somewhat more a paean to what Karnofsky calls “[emphasizing] various ideas and mental habits that are inspired by the abstract idea of [expected utility maximization]”: The Path to Reason
Other things which seem related:
Eliezer’s Sequences and Mainstream Academia: 4 minute read, connecting various Eliezerisms to the academic literature
Every Cause Wants to be a Cult: 3 minute read, essay by Eliezer on why Eliezer doesn’t want you to defer to Eliezer
Expecting Short Inferential Distances: 3 minute read, essay on why explaining things is sometimes hard
Some “rationality in action” type posts from a variety of authors, to demonstrate what it looks like when people try to use the Bayesian mindset (these posts are all Real Hipster, written by contrarians who were subsequently proven correct by common consensus; the purpose of rationality is to be as correct as possible as quickly as possible).
The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom: 14 minute read, about how Amanda Knox was innocent (written before she was imprisoned and later exonerated)
Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others: 8 minute read, about efficient charity (written before “effective altruism” was a term and some years before the Centre for Effective Altruism existed)
Seeing the Smoke: a post about Covid-19, written in February of 2020
Hope you find this useful!
Thanks for the recommendations! I wouldn’t have any issues either with a moderately-sized book (say, from 200-400 pages long).
Cheers.
M.
Many people stand by The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef (though I haven’t myself read it) (here’s a book review of it that you can read to decide whether you want to buy or borrow the book). I don’t know how many pages long it is exactly but am 85% sure it falls in your range.
On the nightstand next to me is Replacing Guilt by Nate Soares—it’s 202 pages long and they are all of them great. You can find much of the material online here, you could give the first few chapters a glance-through to see if you like them.
I’m interested to see which books other people recommend!