Yes, I am. If you understand Bayes' Theorem on a probabilistic level, that guide isn't for you. (Truly understand it, mind.) If you're looking for Yudkowsky's patented "how to apply Bayes' Theorem every day and change your life," well, odds are you already do most of what he's talking about. Inferential updating. His Sequences are wonderful reading, in my opinion. If you don't understand Bayes' Theorem (truly understand it) -- that is, the math -- maybe this will help more. Yudkowsky has not always got a handle on whether people are picking up what he's putting down (as evidenced in the link above). (1) and (2) are very good "criticisms." Those are essentially the exact statements that most people arrive at if they spend long enough on LessWrong but don't buy in. The reason I put criticism in quotes was that I don't think either is a bad thing, particularly. EDIT: you may or may not know that Yudkowsky himself is a prominent AI researcher. Whether that's a "self-important" thing to be or an "actually-important" one is your call. Very smart people seem to be worried](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence_n_5267481.html](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence_n_5267481.html)).] Markup is going nuts sorry. The wheat and chaff seems to be this: do you think people act rationally [NB: not a synonym for 'without emotion']? I'm an economist, so I'm supposed to think they do. However, they don't. Next, do you think people should act rationally? That is, should they make well-thought-out decisions that benefit their utility? If no to the first and yes to the second, the logical step seems to be to teach everyone how to think. That's, vulgarly, what Yudkowsky tried to do. Bayes' Theorem is part of it, but the broader points, I think, are eliminating bias and being honest with yourself. The reasons I like Yudkowsky are several. One, I agree with a lot of his ideas, so reading his writing is positive reinforcement (it should be noted that this is an ironically bad reason -- I'm just being honest). Two, he can really, really write fiction. Three, he's smart. He teaches me things. He says stuff that has legitimately never occurred to me, even about subjects on which I've thought heavily. Four, most important, he was the first person to codify explicitly, in terms I could understand, the way I've been thinking for my entire life. Proverbial lightbulb in the comic strip thing when I first began to explore.
Word, thanks for the input, I'm gonna snoop around some more, it seems interesting so far. This is that thing that both kooks and straight up masters of their craft have in common, so it can get confusing at times. They weren't criticisms that I want to keep standing behind, I'd rather get at the underlying ideas. More so just general first impressions that left me wanting to double check I'm not just browsing the blog posts of some rationality charlatan. I adhere to some ideologies myself, but I try to keep them in check. His claims about his version of reasoning supplanting Popper's falsifiability, however, that's some bombastic stuff I want to get in to and see some responses. Philosophy of Science can be a nebulous thing sometimes, but them's fightin words.Yudkowsky has not always got a handle on whether people are picking up what he's putting down.
(1) and (2) are very good "criticisms."