The cover is incorrect :(
EDIT: If you do not understand this post, read essay 268 from the book!
The code of the shepherds is terrible and stern. One sheep, one pebble, hang the consequences. They have been known to commit fifteen, and twenty-one, and even even, rather than break it.
Perhaps this is already discussed elsewhere and I'm failing at search. I'd be amazed if the below wasn't already pointed out.
On rereading this material it strikes me that this text is effectively inaccessible to large portions of the population. When I binged on these posts several years ago, I was just focused on the content for myself. This time, I had the thought to purchase for some others who would benefit from this material. I realized relatively quickly that the purchase of this book would likely fail to accomplish anything for these people, and may make a future attempt more difficult.
I think many of my specific concerns apply to a large percentage of the population.
Thanks for all the comments! This is helpful. I agree 'Biases: An Introduction' needs to function better as a hook. The balls-in-an-urn example was chosen because it's an example Eliezer re-uses a few times later in the Sequences, but I'd love to hear ideas for better examples, or in general a more interesting way to start the book.
'Religion is an obvious example of a false set of doctrines' is so thoroughly baked into the Sequences that I think getting rid of it would require creating an entirely new book. R:AZ won't be as effective for theists, just as it won't be as effective for people who find math, philosophy, or science aversive.
I agree with you about 'boiling the frog', though: it would be nice if the book eased its way into anti-religious examples. I ended up deciding it was more important to quickly reach accessible interesting examples (like the ones in 'Fake Beliefs') than to optimize for broad appeal to theists and agnostics. One idea I've been tossing around, though, is to edit Book I ('Map and Territory') and Book II ('How to Actually Change Your Mind') for future release in such a way that it's possible to read II before I. It will still probably be better for most ...
I've had similar concerns and I agree with a lot of this.
Get this closer to a 7th grade reading level. This sets a low bar at potential readers who can understand 'blockbuster' books in English. (This might be accomplished purely with the terminology concern/change above)
If we really want to approach a 7th grade reading level, then we had better aim for kindergartners. I remember reading through the book trying to imagine how to bring it down several levels and thinking about just how many words I was taking for granted as a high-IQ adult who has had plenty of time to just passively soak up vocabulary and overviews of highly complex fields. I just don't think we're there yet; I think that's why there are things like SPARC where we're trying it out on highly intelligent high school students who are unusually well-educated for their age.
Change all hyperlinks to footnotes.
To my knowledge this is already a priority.
Is there any ongoing attempt or desire to do a group edit of this into an 'Accessible Rationality'?
I find that there's a wide disparity between LW users in intelligence and education, and I don't know if I see a wiki-like approach converging on anything particula...
Just a reminder that mistakes/problems/errors can be sent to errata@intelligence.org and we'll try fix them!
I can't mail that address, I get a failure message from Google:
We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (errata) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group.
I'll post my feedback here:
...Hello,
I got the book "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" via intelligence.org/e-junkie for my Kindle (5th gen, not the paperwhite/touch/fire). So far I've read a dozen pages, but since it will take me a while to get to the end of the book I'll give some feedback right away:
- The book looks great! Some other ebooks I have don't use page-breaks at the end of a chapter, don't have a Table of Content, have inconsistent font types/sizes etc. The PDF version is very pretty as well.
- The filename "Rationality.mobi" (AI-Zombie) is the same as "rationality.mobi" (HPMOR)
A bunch of inter-book links such as "The Twelve Virtues of Rationality"/"Predictably Wrong"/"Fake Beliefs"/"Noticing Confusion" (all from Biases: An introduction) don't work: On my Kindle I have the option to "Follow link", but when I choose it the page refreshes and I'm still at the same spot.
Inspectin
One of the most common complaints about the old Sequences was that there was no canonical default order, especially for people who didn't want to read the entire blog archive chronologically.
I was tricked into doing this. Years ago someone posted an ebook claiming to be the Sequences, but was actually just every single Yudkowsky blog post from 2006 to 2010 -_-
It took until noticing that only Yudkowsky's side of the FOOM debate was in there that I realized what had happened
Good work guys!
This might be the excuse I need to finally go through the complete sequences as opposed to relying on cherry-picking posts whenever I encounter a reference I don't already know.
Excellent, thank you! Any update on when the real book will be available for purchase for those of us who don't do ebooks?
From Amazon, 30% goes to Amazon and 70% goes to MIRI.
From e-junkie (the pay-what-you-want option): 100% goes to MIRI, minus PayPal transaction fees (a few %).
I am impressed. The production quality on this is excellent, and the new introduction by Rob Bensinger is approachable for new readers. I will definitely be recommending this over the version on this site.
I paid $0 because I'd rather not pay transaction fees on a donation to charity. You can donate to MIRI directly here:
https://intelligence.org/donate/
And CFAR here:
The zip file has some extra Apple metadata files included. Nothing too revealing, just dropbox bits.
For reasons, I suggest that Bayesian Judo doesn't make EY look good to people who aren't already cheering for his team, and maybe it wasn't wise to include it.
More generally, the book feels a bit... neutered. Things like, for example, changing "if you go ahead and mess around with Wulky's teenage daughter" to "if you go ahead and insult Wulky". The first is concrete, evocative, and therefore strong, while the latter is fuzzy and weak. Though my impression may be skewed just because I remember the original examples so well.
I am thinking of recommending this to people, all of whom are unlikely to pay. Is having people acquire this for $0 who would otherwise not have read it beneficial or harmful to MIRI? (If the answer is "harmful because of paying for people to download it", I can email it to my friends with a payment link instead of directing them to your website.)
With SumatraPDF 3.0 on Windows 8.1 x64, the links in the PDF version do not show up. With Adobe Reader 11 on Windows 7 x86, they look fine. On the other hand, SumatraPDF can also handle the MOBI and EPUB versions.
Hi, and thanks for the awesome job! Will you keep a public record of changes you make to the book? I'm coordinating a translation effort, and that would be important to keep it in sync if you change the actual text, not just fix spelling and hyperlinking errors.
Edit: Our translation effort is for Portuguese only, and can be found at http://racionalidade.com.br/wiki .
I liked Robby's introduction to the book overall, but I find it somewhat ironic that right after the prologue where Eliezer mentions that one of his biggest mistakes in writing the Sequences was focusing on abstract philosophical problems that are removed from people's daily problems, the introduction begins with
Imagine reaching into an urn that contains seventy white balls and thirty red ones, and plucking out ten mystery balls.
The first (though not necessarily best) example of how to rewrite this in less abstract form that comes to mind would be some...
Don't have paypal or credit card or bitcoins or similar stuff, 0 price for now, I will look into donating from my Maestro debit card or maybe a direct transfer although international transfer rates may make that not worth the while. That and cash are the only methods I use - I rarely need anything I cannot buy with them. (I use gift cards purchased in shops for steam and google play.) I am thinking about purchasing some bitcoins for € for such donations purpose, if anyone can recommend a safe and debit card (or sofort.com) compatible service?
Do people think there is value in making an audio book from this?
I was thinking it would be possible to do in a similar process to the HPMOR audiobook with people contributing different chapters. If there is interest in doing this and if it is permitted to be done then I will happily volunteer to coordinate the effort. If this idea does have support then given the discussion below about how the book could be improved, would it make more sense to postpone an audiobook to allow for sensible changes, or is that an unnecessary delay in search of unreachable perfection?
I just finished listening to the Audiobook version of Rationality: From AI to Zombie. Lots of thanks to Yudkowsky and everyone else that was involved in making this book and the audio book. I do not know who the reader of the audio book is, but thanks all the same.
I am writing this comment as my way of prizing this book. I will try to summarize what I have personalty learned from it, in the hope that someone who was involved, will read this post and fell some pride in having helped me in my self improvement. But I am also writing this comment because I ju...
Does the book (especially the printed version) have training problems after sections? (I don't have it, sorry if the question is redundant).
A friend of mine is interested in reading this book, but would prefer a printed copy. Is there any chance that this book will be published any time soon?
Is there anything on procrastination? I'm tempted to buy this bookinstead cause the dude has an alright podcast too. I don't listen to it anymore cause it's boring and not consistently novel information but yeah.
When I feel like this I don't want to read chapters that are complex sounding like Rationality and Politics and Death Spirals that without having read the sequences, don't mean shit to me and could equally appear in some random Trotskyist propoganda from the weird organisation down the road.
When are these pop-rationality books gonna be replaced by...
Sorry for my problem.I tried 15 times downloading,only once started and stopped at 1.5M/30.6M. Others can't even get to track. I wish to use another source ,or some kind friends could send the pdf to 513493106@qq.com?DEEPLY BOW for your help!
Eliezer Yudkowsky's original Sequences have been edited, reordered, and converted into an ebook!
Rationality: From AI to Zombies is now available in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI versions on intelligence.org (link). You can choose your own price to pay for it (minimum $0.00), or buy it for $4.99 from Amazon (link). The contents are:
The ebook's release has been timed to coincide with the end of Eliezer's other well-known introduction to rationality, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. The two share many similar themes, and although Rationality: From AI to Zombies is (mostly) nonfiction, it is decidedly unconventional nonfiction, freely drifting in style from cryptic allegory to personal vignette to impassioned manifesto.
The 333 posts have been reorganized into twenty-six sequences, lettered A through Z. In order, these are titled:
Several sequences and posts have been renamed, so you'll need to consult the ebook's table of contents to spot all the correspondences. Four of these sequences (marked in bold) are almost completely new. They were written at the same time as Eliezer's other Overcoming Bias posts, but were never ordered or grouped together. Some of the others (A, C, L, S, V, Y, Z) have been substantially expanded, shrunk, or rearranged, but are still based largely on old content from the Sequences.
One of the most common complaints about the old Sequences was that there was no canonical default order, especially for people who didn't want to read the entire blog archive chronologically. Despite being called "sequences," their structure looked more like a complicated, looping web than like a line. With Rationality: From AI to Zombies, it will still be possible to hop back and forth between different parts of the book, but this will no longer be required for basic comprehension. The contents have been reviewed for consistency and in-context continuity, so that they can genuinely be read in sequence. You can simply read the book as a book.
I have also created a community-edited Glossary for Rationality: From AI to Zombies. You're invited to improve on the definitions and explanations there, and add new ones if you think of any while reading. When we release print versions of the ebook (as a six-volume set), a future version of the Glossary will probably be included.