In this comment I want to address the following paragraph (related to #2).
If the goal is to encourage Math Olympiad winners to join the Effective Altruism community, why are they being given a book that has little explicitly to do with Effective Altruism? The Life You Can Save, Doing Good Better, and _80,000 Hours_are three books much more relevant to Effective Altruism than Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Furthermore, they are much cheaper than the $43 per copy of HPMOR. Even if one is to make the argument that HPMOR is more effective at encouraging Effective Altruism — which I doubt and is substantiated nowhere — one also has to go further and provide evidence that the difference in cost of each copy of HPMOR relative to any of the other books I mentioned is justified. It is quite possible that sending the Math Olympiad winners a link to Peter Singer’s TED Talk, “The why and how of effective altruism”, is more effective than HPMOR in encouraging effective altruism. It is also free!
a. While I agree that the books you’ve mentioned are more directly related to EA than HPMoR. I think it would not be possible to give them as a prize. I think the fact that the organizers whom we contacted had read HPMoR significantly contributed to the possibility to give anything at all.
b. I share your concern about HPMoR not being EA enough. We hope to mitigate it via leaflet + SPARC/ESPR.
Dear Morgan,
In this comment I want to address the following paragraph (related to #2).
a. While I agree that the books you’ve mentioned are more directly related to EA than HPMoR. I think it would not be possible to give them as a prize. I think the fact that the organizers whom we contacted had read HPMoR significantly contributed to the possibility to give anything at all.
b. I share your concern about HPMoR not being EA enough. We hope to mitigate it via leaflet + SPARC/ESPR.