Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer YudkowskyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I ended up liking this book a lot, and more than I was expecting at first.
The first three chapters didn’t really say anything I don’t already believe and hadn’t already thought about a reasonable amount, but they were a clear and entertaining presentation of the material. The last four chapters were basically a thoughtful examination of why people hate Eliezer and why he thinks that those people are wrong. I’m not sure if I agree with everything in them–I think that I think it’s harder to choose between disagreeing experts in fields in which you are not expert than he thinks it is. (I agree that if you can just try, and make bets, and see if you’re right, and update, that’s good. I think there are a lot of cases where it’s just hard to do this.) But I think being skeptical of reasoning motivated by status-regulating emotions is an important and good thing (for me personally, at least) to do.
If you like Eliezer, you’ve probably read this book already. If you hate Eliezer, I think you should read this book, and if you still hate him at the end then you can give up. If you don’t know who Eliezer is, probably don’t read this book and read Slate Star Codex instead.
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