Rewriting the sequences?

I agree that some combination of rewriting and rearranging is called for. I think that most people here haven't thought of editing the sequences as allowed, because they're Eliezer's articles, promoted to high status. In actual fact, that page started as just a categorized list; using it as a suggested reading order came later, and it was never optimized for that purpose. The very notion of reading articles in category-sorted order is pretty stupid; it would be better to give new readers a taste of each of the topics Less Wrong has to offer, to maximize the chance that one of them will pull them in, and then go in depth about particular topics.

There should be particular emphasis on the first posts in a depth-first traversal, since those are what people will start with when told to read the sequences. The first article people will read, following this pattern, is The Simple Truth. And as a newcomer's introduction to Less Wrong, The Simple Truth is terrible. I mean, it's a good article, but it's much too long, indirect and sparse, and it's aimed at dispelling specific confused notions which most readers won't even have.

So let's fix it. Our goal is to choose the first few articles people read, in order to maximize the chance that they get hooked and keep reading. We can either pick high-quality historical posts, by any author, or write new articles specifically for this purpose. The very first article should get special attention, and be chosen carefully. After that, there should be one article about each major topic, before circling around to go into depth about any one topic. Many of the best articles for this purpose will come from the sequence, but there are also a lot of high-quality posts that aren't part of any sequence that should be considered. It's also probably a good idea to include a variety of authors, to make it clear that this is a community blog and not just Eliezer.

So please post (1) the one article that you think newcomers should read, to maximize the chance that they read more; and (2) articles you think should be in the first ten articles that a newcomer reads.

The book Eliezer has been working on is the shorter, better version of the sequences.

My suggestion: lesswrong should have a prominently placed random article button.

My background: It would be hard for me to guess what fraction of material I have read. I read some stuff, enthusiastically, when this community was at Overcoming Bias. Since then I have had one foot in this community. However, when I get enthusiastic, I find myself spending Far Too Long attempting to read the sequences; I decide to put them aside again and do more productive things.

As a result, I am somewhat conflicted. I think the lesswrong philosophy is excellent. I link friends to lesswrong articles often, hoping that they will end up reading more than just the one article. Yet, for myself, I feel I "get the idea" and that reading old articles more systematically, while fun, is too hard and too time-consuming.

I get the urge to go back and read stuff every so often. Re-starting from the beginning of a sequence or the chronological list of articles is demoralizing, though; I'm just looking for something fun to read, not to start a project. Therefore, my proposal: a Random Article button.

My guess is that this would also be useful to other people not sure where to start.

(I understand that this would require a semi-significant amount of programming.)

Oh, also:

More sorting options on the main blog and on pages for individual contributors would be nice. If I could see all posts (promoted, or of an individual) in chronological order (starting with the first, not the most recent), that would be nice.

There's a bit of background information that might answer some of your questions.

The reason that the sequences written by Eliezer Yudkowsky don't feel like the product of a community blog is that they were originally written for Overcoming Bias which was an ordinary blog with a limited set of contributors and only later imported to LessWrong (which was created when those sequences were pretty much finished).

As far as I know, the story behind the sequences is that Eliezer Yudkowsky wanted to write a book about rationality. However, he had some trouble with it so he decided to first write out all the material in the form of blog posts of lower quality than a finished book would have. He is now working on that book and the last public statement about it that I'm aware of is somewhere in this interview.

Also, LessWrong has a wiki that's supposed to contain succint summaries of ideas presented in the articles but I don't know how complete it is.

Take the first one I came to "The Simple Truth".

I agree that "The Simple Truth" is long and meandering. It would definitely benefit from being supplemented with a summary containing just the core claims and arguments, with all of the characters and satire stripped away.

But that article is not part of the sequences. It was written before Eliezer started blogging at Overcoming Bias (the blog from which LW branched off)*. It certainly isn't typical of the sequence posts. Almost none of them (if any) are anywhere close to that long.

*At least, I believe that this is so. Eliezer already mentions it in his third OB post.

Thanks for the reminder. I plan to re-write Truly Part of You in a way that requires fewer pre-requisites, since I think it's such a useful, universal heuristic that nearly obviates a lot of the other material.

I have noticed that my lack of math skills put me at a great disadvantage. Telling people to go to khanacademy and do all the exams is a bit extreme, but maybe someone would be able to write a convincing post about how truly understanding math would help further understanding in general and lesswrong specifically.

Other than that i fully agree that we need a rewrite and re-ordering of the content to be more beginner friendly. I am willing to spend time helping out here but i do not know what to do.

Take the first one I came to "The Simple Truth".

What make you think a single version will work for all audiences?

For example, the one you picked ("The Simple Truth") has been re-written for people immersed in Semiotics:

"Pragmatism and Umwelt-theory", by Alexei Sharov

and the result is clearer for them, but probably less clear for most people.

By the way,

I still haven't heard an explanation of what "The Simple Truth" is about. Maybe that requires a whole separate post.