Best Nonfiction Writing on Less Wrong

Writing-wise (not idea-wise), my favorite LW post is Beyond the Reach of God.

I'm pretty bad at separating form from content, but I'd nominate Yvain's Diseased Thinkining.

I previously considered this question and came up with a suggested reading order with my favorite hundred. It does mix the issues of writing quality and subject importance together, though.

I'd be surprised if this wasn't mentioned at all, but just in case, one of the best I ever read was all about this guy Bruce.

I'm going to be a suck-up and nominate the neglected virtue of scholarship.

I'm researching "MaxEnt" so lukeprog's recommendation of the Williamson book on Bayesianism is directly useful to me.

But actually it’s a great article (the reasons why are somewhat easy to analyse in hindsight – writing a piece of such quality in the first place is the challenge!)

First he illustrates clearly the problem to be discussed (neglect of scholarship), using a quote to emphasise the consensus that exists regarding the value of scholarship. He then provides a very engaging example about the lack of scholarship of atheists who debate theists – engaging because a supermajority of readers are provoked by the idea that theists might win such a debate, because it is very detailed (evidence that the author practises what he preaches) and because the criticism of a notably rational group of people prevents the reader from dismissing the idea that they as a rationalist might need to improve their own scholarship.

The subsequent mention of Less Wrong readers and their lack of detailed understanding of Bayesianism, to the extent that it is true (probably a large extent) then hammers home the point that the reader is in fact not as scholarly as he might be. This is followed by a criticism of Yudkowsky’s own scholarship in one of his articles, which is entertaining because it is ironic given the quote at the start of the article, and immediately prevents the reader from feeling that the author is trying to humiliate him with these examples (since Yudkowsky is such a respected figure).

At the end of the article lukeprog provides concrete recommendations regarding how to improve one’s scholarship – in effect helping the reader to overcome the “twinge of starting” that might cause him to procrastinate in trying to implement the author’s suggestions. In a general sense the article adopts a strict, but encouraging tone which also should help in this regard.

Gift We Give Tomorrow was extremely moving to me, and I am frustrated that my friends/family can't appreciate it until they read half the sequences.

I had read some of Eliezer's writings on Overcoming Bias back while he was still constructing the sequences, but I'm pretty sure it was reading Lost Purposes that got me gripped enough to want to go on and read the entirety of the sequences. It's possible that other articles I encountered in the process were better written, but that one remains more memorable.

I like the use of rhetoric in "Explain/Worship/Ignore?". It starts with a story, which is a nice and concrete way to draw the reader in. It also uses a computer control convention combined with underlining to repeatedly draw attention back to the main point. And then there's this little gem:

We can hit Explain for the Big Bang, and wait while science grinds through its process, and maybe someday it will return a perfectly good explanation. But then that will just bring up another dialog box. So, if we continue long enough, we must come to a special dialog box, a new option, an Explanation That Needs No Explanation, a place where the chain ends - and this, maybe, is the only explanation worth knowing.

There - I just hit Worship.

Update: I've listed some of my other non-fiction favorites here.

I really like Possibility and Couldness, but that could be because i've been talking about determinism a lot lately. Also, Zombies? Zombies! was a fun read.

I also like the writing in What Evidence Filtered Evidence?.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/kg/expecting_short_inferential_distances/

most useful

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I thought of more then one way to answer this question. I figured I would give one answer for each way I could think, as if I was nominating them for different categories, as it were.

Are there any posts I've liked/upvoted? Yes, but there are too many to list here, and if I answer 10+ posts, it feels like it doesn't really standout as the "Best" writing.

Are there any posts I've liked/upvoted and saved? Lukeprog, your crash course was the only one I found that I liked and saved, so that's probably one of my personal favorites.

Are there any sequences that stood out in my head as being a best sequence? The fun theory sequence

Are there any elements in that sequence that stood out as being the best part of the sequence? Interpersonal entanglement

Is there any way of trying to answer this question on a level that might be more objective than my own opinion? There is a way to sort posts to see top voted posts, but there may be some bias involved: As a possible example of this, being a top voted post might get more exposure, which may get you more votes. Bearing that in mind, the most highly rated post of all time is Yvain's generalizing from one example with 190 points as of this post.

These are also available from the top bar, but in case anyone would like some quick links:

http://lesswrong.com/top/

http://lesswrong.com/topcomments/

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/top/

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/topcomments/

Are the Sequences out of bounds?