Thanks for the comment and the list of recommendations. I have read most of the things on that list and the ones that I did read, I thought were great and have recommended a bunch to others, especially Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, The Elephant in the Brain, and forecasting practice. I agree that there are some dangers in recommending something that is pretty packaged but I think there is an obvious benefit in that it feels like a distilled version of reading a bunch of valuable things. Per unit time, I found reading the sequences more insightful/useful to me than the sources which it gets its ideas from (even if I read those things before the sequences, I am fairly confident).
I don’t want to oversell the sequences, I think the ideas in them have been mentioned in other places earlier. In my post, I mentioned specifically what ideas I found valuable so that people who are already familiar with them or think they are not that useful can decide not to read them. That isn’t rhetorical, I have some wise friends who are pretty well-read on philosophy and economics, and a lot of the things in the sequences I found novel, they were already familiar with.
My recommendation would look very different for someone who read the sequences and then made that their whole personality. I do know of some people who overrate them but in some of my specific circles (EA uni groups for eg), I think they are underrated/not given a chance which is why I wrote this post.
Thanks for the comment and the list of recommendations. I have read most of the things on that list and the ones that I did read, I thought were great and have recommended a bunch to others, especially Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, The Elephant in the Brain, and forecasting practice. I agree that there are some dangers in recommending something that is pretty packaged but I think there is an obvious benefit in that it feels like a distilled version of reading a bunch of valuable things. Per unit time, I found reading the sequences more insightful/useful to me than the sources which it gets its ideas from (even if I read those things before the sequences, I am fairly confident).
I don’t want to oversell the sequences, I think the ideas in them have been mentioned in other places earlier. In my post, I mentioned specifically what ideas I found valuable so that people who are already familiar with them or think they are not that useful can decide not to read them. That isn’t rhetorical, I have some wise friends who are pretty well-read on philosophy and economics, and a lot of the things in the sequences I found novel, they were already familiar with.
My recommendation would look very different for someone who read the sequences and then made that their whole personality. I do know of some people who overrate them but in some of my specific circles (EA uni groups for eg), I think they are underrated/not given a chance which is why I wrote this post.