The LessWrong sequences were written primarily as an instruction manual for potential young people like Yudkowsky.

This is a claim about Yudkowsky's own intent, judged as of 2023-04-06. True: Yudkowsky's contemporaneous or earlier writing (e.g. the Rationality: From AI to Zombies preface, or posts from when the Sequences were written, 2006–2009) says the main purpose was to teach or guide young people like himself. Mostly true: earlier statements make this a major purpose, but present it alongside other aims of similar weight. Mixed: earlier statements give a clearly different main aim (e.g. building a community of rationalists to work on AI alignment), with this as a secondary aim. Mostly false: contemporaneous statements put the main purpose elsewhere and mention this aim only in passing. False: contemporaneous statements contradict it outright.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Rationality: From AI to Zombies readthesequences.com (compilation edited by Rob Bensinger; preface by Eliezer Yudkowsky) · February 2015 Own record

   “It was a mistake that I didn’t write my two years of blog posts with the intention of helping people do better in their everyday lives. I wrote it with the intention of helping people solve big, difficult, important problems”

2. E2 Rationality: From AI to Zombies readthesequences.com (compilation edited by Rob Bensinger; preface by Eliezer Yudkowsky) · February 2015 Own record

   “There is a certain valuable way of thinking, which is not yet taught in schools, in this present day. This certain way of thinking is not taught systematically at all.”

3. E3 History of Less Wrong Alignment Forum (community-maintained wiki) · 1 February 2024

   “After discovering he was not able to make as much progress as he wanted to, he changed tacts to focus on teaching the rationality skills necessary to do AI safety research until such time as there was a sustainable culture”

4. E4 Beginnings: An Introduction readthesequences.com (editorial introduction by Rob Bensinger) Own record

   “Though Yudkowsky was moved to write these essays by his own philosophical mistakes and professional difficulties in AI theory, the resultant material has proven useful to a much wider audience.”

5. E5 Raising the Sanity Waterline — LessWrong LessWrong · 11 March 2009 Own record

   “If every trace of religion was magically eliminated from the world tomorrow, then—however much improved the lives of many people would be—we would not even have come close to solving the larger failures of sanity that made religion possible in the first place.”

In the 2015 preface, Yudkowsky says he wrote the posts "with the intention of helping people solve big, difficult, important problems" and to pass on a way of thinking that schools do not teach (E1, E2). A 2024 wiki history links the writing to teaching the rationality skills needed for AI safety research (E3), and the editor's introduction says he was moved by his own philosophical mistakes and professional difficulties in AI theory (E4). None of these sources mentions young people like Yudkowsky as the intended audience, either to confirm or to reject that aim. The stated aim of helping capable people tackle big problems could include such readers, so the evidence neither confirms the claim nor clearly makes the young-reader aim minor or contradicted.