I'm currently reading Yudkowsky's "Rationality: from AI to zombies". Not my first try, since the book is just a collection of blog posts and I found it a bit hard to swallow due its repetitiveness, so I gave up after the first 50 "chapters" the first time I tried. Now I'm enjoying it way more, probably because I'm more interested in the topic now.
For those who haven't delved(ha!) into his work or have been pushed back by the cultish looks, I have to say that he's genuinelly onto something. There are a lot of practical ideas that are pretty useful for everyday thinking ("Belief in Belief", "Emergence", "Generalizing from fiction", etc...).
For example, I recall being in lot of arguments that are purely "semantical" in nature. You seem to disagree about something but it's just that both sides aren't really referring to the same phenomenon. The source of the disagreement is just using the same word for different, but related, "objects". This is something that seems obvious, but the kind of thing you only realize in retrospect, and I think I'm much better equipped now to be aware of it in real time.
I recommend giving it a try.
For those who haven't delved(ha!) into his work or have been pushed back by the cultish looks, I have to say that he's genuinelly onto something. There are a lot of practical ideas that are pretty useful for everyday thinking ("Belief in Belief", "Emergence", "Generalizing from fiction", etc...).
For example, I recall being in lot of arguments that are purely "semantical" in nature. You seem to disagree about something but it's just that both sides aren't really referring to the same phenomenon. The source of the disagreement is just using the same word for different, but related, "objects". This is something that seems obvious, but the kind of thing you only realize in retrospect, and I think I'm much better equipped now to be aware of it in real time.
I recommend giving it a try.