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What are the top 1-10 posts / sequences / articles / etc. that you've found most useful for yourself for becoming "less wrong"?

by Aryeh Englander
27th Mar 2022
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What are the top 1-10 posts / sequences / articles / etc. that you've found most useful for yourself for becoming "less wrong"?
7Alaric
2mingyuan
2Jack R
7Shmi
3Gunnar_Zarncke
7Gunnar_Zarncke
1Aryeh Englander
3Gunnar_Zarncke
1[anonymous]
3Gunnar_Zarncke
3Viliam
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Alaric

Mar 27, 2022

70

It is very difficult to select particular posts or book chapters because many ideas are becoming significant when you have known another ideas already. A context is very important for many ideas.

I can list some posts which seemed very important for me in the past.

  • A Human's Guide to Words sequence
  • Chaotic inversion
  • Epistemic learned helplessness
  • CFAR's Rationality checklist
     
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mingyuan

Mar 29, 2022

20

Thinking only about posts that made me a better rationalist/thinker/person able to achieve things in the world:

  • Eliezer: 
    • Your Strength as a Rationalist (spoiler: it's your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality)
    • Is That Your True Rejection?
    • Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)
  • Scott Alexander: 
    • Generalizing From One Example
    • Meditations on Moloch
  • Anna Salamon: The correct response to uncertainty is *not* half-speed
  • Paul Graham: The Top Idea in Your Mind
  • Nate Soares: 
    • Enjoying the feeling of agency 
    • Stop trying to try and try
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Jack R

Mar 28, 2022

20

I (with some help) compiled some of the best rationality essays here.

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[-]Shmi4y70

Can't pick just a few, but I'd go for The One True Source, SSC/ACX and check the top posts.

As a bonus, Scott references LW quite often, and these links are almost universally to high-quality writeups.

Paul Graham's http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html is a must read and internalize. Almost all of us feel angry when something we hold dear is attacked, and often than not it reveals a part of our identity we didn't know we had.

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[-]Gunnar_Zarncke4y30

A valuable sequence to have would be a review of all of Paul Graham's essays. His Twitter - paulg - is also of interest.

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[-]Gunnar_Zarncke4y70

A good starting point is https://www.lesswrong.com/bestoflesswrong 

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[-]Aryeh Englander4y10

Yes, I'm aware of that. But that's a yearly list, and I'm asking for all-time favorites.

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[-]Gunnar_Zarncke4y30

You could go by the all-time highest voted:

https://www.lesswrong.com/allPosts?timeframe=allTime 

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[-][anonymous]4y10

cool! but nothing for 2020 or 2021?

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[-]Gunnar_Zarncke4y30

2020 is in the making: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ScqWBr8mxy32PzoDz/2020-review-final-voting 

2021 will be next year. The best-of are done one year after when the dust has settled down. 

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[-]Viliam4y30

Less nicely arranged, but here is the list for 2020. For 2021 we didn't have the vote yet.

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Posts can be from LessWrong, the EA Forum, or any other blog or forum. Articles from other sources are fine as well, as are videos or podcast episodes. Books don't count for the purpose of this post, but if there is a specific chapter in a book that you found particularly useful then that counts.