Note: This shortform is now superseded by a top-level post I adapted it into. There is no longer any reason to read the shortform version.
Book sort-of-recommendations
Here I list all the EA-relevant books Iāve read or listened to as audiobooks since learning about EA, in roughly descending order of how useful I perceive/āremember them being to me.
I share this in case others might find it useful, as a supplement to other book recommendation lists. (I found Rob Wiblin, Nick Beckstead, and Luke Muehlhauserās lists very useful.) That said, this isnāt exactly a recommendation list, because:
some of factors making these books more/āless useful to me wonāt generalise to most other people
Iām including all relevant books Iāve read (not just the top picks)
Let me know if you want more info on why I found something useful or not so useful.
See here for a list of things Iāve written that summarise, comment on, or take inspiration from parts of The Precipice.
I recommend reading the ebook or physical book rather than audiobook, because the footnotes contain a lot of good content and arenāt included in the audiobook
The book Superintelligence may have influenced me more, but thatās just due to the fact that I read it very soon after getting into EA, whereas I read The Precipice after already learning a lot. Iād now recommend The Precipice first.
I rank Secret of Our Success as more useful to me, but that may be partly because I read it first; if I only read either this book or Secret of Our Success, Iām not sure which Iād find more useful.
See here for my notes on this book, and here for some more thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
This and other nuclear-war-related books are more useful for me than they would be for most people, since Iām currently doing research related to nuclear war
This is available as an audiobook, but a few Audible reviewers suggest using the physical book due to the bookās use of equations and graphs. So I downloaded this free PDF into my iPadās Kindle app.
This might be better than Superintelligence and Human-Compatible as an introduction to the topic of AI risk. It also seemed to me to be a surprisingly good introduction to the history of AI, how AI works, etc.
But Iām not sure thisāll be very useful for people whoāve already read/ālistened to a decent amount (e.g., the equivalent of 4 books) about those topics.
Thatās why itās ranked as low as it is for me.
But maybe Iām underestimating how useful itād be to many other people in a similar position.
Evidence for that is that someone told me that an AI safety researcher friend of theirs found the book helpful.
One thing to note is that I think a lot of chapter 6 (which accounts for roughly a third of the book) can be summed up as āDonāt worry too much about a bunch of alleged ārulesā about grammar, word choice, etc. that prescriptivist purists sometimes criticise people for breaking.ā
And I already wasnāt worried most of those alleged rules, and hadnāt even heard of some of them.
And I think one could get the basic point without seeing all the examples and discussion.
So a busy reader might want to skip or skim most of that chapter.
Though I think many people would benefit from the part on commas.
I read an ebook rather than listening to the audiobook, because I thought that might be a better way to absorb the lessons about writing style
This might be the most useful of all these books for people who have little prior familiarity with the ideas, but I happened to already know a decent portion of what was covered.
I found this both surprisingly useful and very surprisinglyenjoyable
To be honest, I was somewhat amused and embarrassed to find what is ultimately Harry Potter fan fiction as enjoyable and thought-provoking as I found this
This overlaps in many ways with Rationality: AI to Zombies, so it would be more valuable to someone who hadnāt already read those sequences
But Iād recommend such a person read those sequences before reading this; I think theyāre more useful (though less enjoyable)
Within the 2 hours before I go to sleep, I try not to stimulate my brain too muchāe.g., I try to avoid listening to most nonfiction audiobooks during that time. But I found that I could listen to this during that time without it keeping my brain too active. This is a perk, as that period of my day is less crowded with other things to do.
Same goes for the books Steve Jobs, Power Broker, Animal Farm, and Consider the Lobster.
It seemed to me that most of what Snyder said was either stuff I already knew, stuff that seemed kind-of obvious or platitude-like, or stuff I was skeptical of
This might be partly due to the book being under 2 hours, and thus giving just a quick overview of the ābasicsā of certain things
So I do think it might be fairly useful per minute for someone who knew quite little about things like Hitler and the Soviet Union
To be honest, Iām not sure why Wiblin recommended this. But I benefitted from many of Wiblinās other recommendations. And I did find this book somewhat interesting.
Honorable mention: 1984, by Orwell, 1949. I havenāt included that in the above list because I read it before I learned about EA. But I think the book, despite being a novel, is actually the most detailed exploration Iāve seen of how a stable, global totalitarian system could arise and sustain itself. (I think this is a sign that there needs to be more actual research on that topicāa novel published more than 70 years ago shouldnāt be one of the best sources on an important topic!)
I recommend making this a top-level post. I think it should be one of the most-upvoted posts on the āEA Booksā tag, but I canāt tag it as a Shortform post.
Note: This shortform is now superseded by a top-level post I adapted it into. There is no longer any reason to read the shortform version.
Book sort-of-recommendations
Here I list all the EA-relevant books Iāve read or listened to as audiobooks since learning about EA, in roughly descending order of how useful I perceive/āremember them being to me.
I share this in case others might find it useful, as a supplement to other book recommendation lists. (I found Rob Wiblin, Nick Beckstead, and Luke Muehlhauserās lists very useful.) That said, this isnāt exactly a recommendation list, because:
some of factors making these books more/āless useful to me wonāt generalise to most other people
Iām including all relevant books Iāve read (not just the top picks)
Let me know if you want more info on why I found something useful or not so useful.
(See also this list of EA-related podcasts and this list of sources of EA-related videos.)
The Precipice, by Ord, 2020
See here for a list of things Iāve written that summarise, comment on, or take inspiration from parts of The Precipice.
I recommend reading the ebook or physical book rather than audiobook, because the footnotes contain a lot of good content and arenāt included in the audiobook
The book Superintelligence may have influenced me more, but thatās just due to the fact that I read it very soon after getting into EA, whereas I read The Precipice after already learning a lot. Iād now recommend The Precipice first.
Superforecasting, by Tetlock & Gardner, 2015
How to Measure Anything, by Hubbard, 2011
Rationality: From AI to Zombies, by Yudkowsky, 2006-2009
I.e., āthe sequencesā
Superintelligence, by Bostrom, 2014
Maybe this wouldāve been a little further down the list if Iād already read The Precipice
Expert Political Judgement, by Tetlock, 2005
I read this after having already read Superforecasting, yet still found it very useful
Normative Uncertainty, by MacAskill, 2014
This is actually a thesis, rather than a book
I assume itās now a better idea to read MacAskill, Bykvist, and Ordās book on the same subject, which is available as a free PDF
Though I havenāt read the book version myself
Secret of Our Success, by Henrich, 2015
See also this interesting Slate Star Codex review
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Henrich, 2020
See also the Wikipedia page on the book, this review on LessWrong, and my notes on the book.
I rank Secret of Our Success as more useful to me, but that may be partly because I read it first; if I only read either this book or Secret of Our Success, Iām not sure which Iād find more useful.
The Strategy of Conflict, by Schelling, 1960
See here for my notes on this book, and here for some more thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
This and other nuclear-war-related books are more useful for me than they would be for most people, since Iām currently doing research related to nuclear war
This is available as an audiobook, but a few Audible reviewers suggest using the physical book due to the bookās use of equations and graphs. So I downloaded this free PDF into my iPadās Kindle app.
Human-Compatible, by Russell, 2019
See also this interesting Slate Star Codex review
The Book of Why, by Pearl, 2018
I found an online PDF rather than listening to the audiobook version, as the book makes substantial use of diagrams
Blueprint, by Plomin, 2018
This is useful primarily in relation to some specific research I was doing, rather than more generically.
Moral Tribes, by Greene, 2013
Algorithms to Live By, by Christian & Griffiths, 2016
The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Pinker, 2011
See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
Command and Control, by Schlosser, 2013
See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
The Doomsday Machine, by Ellsberg, 2017
See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, by Kaplan, 2020
See here for my notes on this book, and here for some more thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
The Alignment Problem, by Christian, 2020
This might be better than Superintelligence and Human-Compatible as an introduction to the topic of AI risk. It also seemed to me to be a surprisingly good introduction to the history of AI, how AI works, etc.
But Iām not sure thisāll be very useful for people whoāve already read/ālistened to a decent amount (e.g., the equivalent of 4 books) about those topics.
Thatās why itās ranked as low as it is for me.
But maybe Iām underestimating how useful itād be to many other people in a similar position.
Evidence for that is that someone told me that an AI safety researcher friend of theirs found the book helpful.
The Sense of Style, by Pinker, 2019
One thing to note is that I think a lot of chapter 6 (which accounts for roughly a third of the book) can be summed up as āDonāt worry too much about a bunch of alleged ārulesā about grammar, word choice, etc. that prescriptivist purists sometimes criticise people for breaking.ā
And I already wasnāt worried most of those alleged rules, and hadnāt even heard of some of them.
And I think one could get the basic point without seeing all the examples and discussion.
So a busy reader might want to skip or skim most of that chapter.
Though I think many people would benefit from the part on commas.
I read an ebook rather than listening to the audiobook, because I thought that might be a better way to absorb the lessons about writing style
The Dead Hand, by Hoffman, 2009
See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Kahneman, 2011
This might be the most useful of all these books for people who have little prior familiarity with the ideas, but I happened to already know a decent portion of what was covered.
Against the Grain, by Scott, 2017
I read this after Sapiens and thought the content would overlap a lot, but in the end I actually thought it provided a lot of independent value.
See also this interesting Slate Star Codex review
Sapiens, by Harari, 2015
Destined for War, by Allison, 2017
See here for some thoughts on this and other nuclear-risk-related books.
The Dictatorās Handbook, by de Mesquita & Smith, 2012
Age of Ambition, by Osnos, 2014
Moral Mazes, by Jackall, 1989
The Myth of the Rational Voter, by Caplan, 2007
The Hungry Brain, by Guyenet, 2017
If I recall correctly, I found this surprisingly useful for purposes unrelated to the topics of weight, hunger, etc.
E.g., it gave me a better understanding of the liking-wanting distinction
See also this Slate Star Codex review (which I canāt remember whether I read)
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, by Yergin, 2011
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Yudkowsky, 2010-2015
Fiction
I found this both surprisingly useful and very surprisingly enjoyable
To be honest, I was somewhat amused and embarrassed to find what is ultimately Harry Potter fan fiction as enjoyable and thought-provoking as I found this
This overlaps in many ways with Rationality: AI to Zombies, so it would be more valuable to someone who hadnāt already read those sequences
But Iād recommend such a person read those sequences before reading this; I think theyāre more useful (though less enjoyable)
Within the 2 hours before I go to sleep, I try not to stimulate my brain too muchāe.g., I try to avoid listening to most nonfiction audiobooks during that time. But I found that I could listen to this during that time without it keeping my brain too active. This is a perk, as that period of my day is less crowded with other things to do.
Same goes for the books Steve Jobs, Power Broker, Animal Farm, and Consider the Lobster.
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, 2011
Surprisingly useful, considering the facts that I donāt plan to at all emulate Jobsā life and that I donāt work in a relevant industry
Enlightenment Now, by Pinker, 2018
The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, by Harford, 2014
Against Empathy, by Bloom, 2016
Inadequate Equilibria, by Yudkowksy, 2017
See also this interesting Slate Star Codex review
Radical Markets, by Posner & Weyl, 2018
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century, by Dikƶtter, 2019
On Tyranny: 20 Lessons for the 20th Century, by Snyder, 2017
It seemed to me that most of what Snyder said was either stuff I already knew, stuff that seemed kind-of obvious or platitude-like, or stuff I was skeptical of
This might be partly due to the book being under 2 hours, and thus giving just a quick overview of the ābasicsā of certain things
So I do think it might be fairly useful per minute for someone who knew quite little about things like Hitler and the Soviet Union
Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, by John Broome, 2012
The Power Broker, by Caro, 1975
Very interesting and engaging, but also very long and probably not super useful.
Science in the Twentieth Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey, by Goldman, 2004
This is actually a series of audio recordings of lectures, rather than a book
Animal Farm, by Orwell, 1945
Fiction
Brave New World, by Huxley, 1932
Fiction
Consider the Lobster, by Wallace, 2005
To be honest, Iām not sure why Wiblin recommended this. But I benefitted from many of Wiblinās other recommendations. And I did find this book somewhat interesting.
Honorable mention: 1984, by Orwell, 1949. I havenāt included that in the above list because I read it before I learned about EA. But I think the book, despite being a novel, is actually the most detailed exploration Iāve seen of how a stable, global totalitarian system could arise and sustain itself. (I think this is a sign that there needs to be more actual research on that topicāa novel published more than 70 years ago shouldnāt be one of the best sources on an important topic!)
(Hat tip to Aaron Gertler for sort-of prompting me to post this list.)
I recommend making this a top-level post. I think it should be one of the most-upvoted posts on the āEA Booksā tag, but I canāt tag it as a Shortform post.
I had actually been thinking I should probably do that sometime, so your message inspired me to pull the trigger and do it now. Thanks!
(I also made a few small improvements/āadditions while I was at it.)