Hey everyone,
Back in April, I said I was going to start writing an instrumental rationality sequence.
It's...sort of done.
I ended up collecting the essays into a sort of e-book. It's mainly content that I've put here (Starting Advice, Planning 101, Habits 101, etc.), but there's also quite a bit of new content.
It clocks in at about 150 pages and 30,000 words, about 15,000 of which I wrote after the April announcement post. (Which beats my estimate of 10,000 words before burnout!!!)
However, the editor for LW 1.0 editor isn't making it easy to port the stuff here from my Google Drive.
As LW 2.0 enters actual open beta, I'll repost / edit the essays and host them there.
(There's also an online version on my blog if for some reason you want to read it there.)
It's my hope that this sequence becomes a useful reference for newcomers looking to learn more about instrumental rationality, which is more specialized than The Sequences (which really are more for epistemics).
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to write the book/sequence I set out to write. The actual book as it is now is about 10% as good as what I actually wanted. There's stuff I didn't get to write, more nuances I'd have liked to cover, more pictures I wanted to make, etc.
After putting in many hours of research and writing, I think I've learned more about the sort of effort that would need to go into making the actual project I'd outlined at the start.
There'll be a postmortem essay analyzing my expectations vs reality coming soon.
As a result of this project and a few other things, I'm feeling burned out. There probably won't be any major projects from me for a little bit, while I rest up.