+1, I would like things like that too. I agree that having much of the great object-level work in the field route through forums (alongside a lot of other material that is not so great) is probably not optimal.
I will say though that going into this, I was not particularly impressed with the suite of beginner articles out there — sans some of Kelsey Piper’s writing — and so I doubt we’re anywhere close to approaching the net-negative territory for the marginal intro piece.
One approach to this might be a soft norm of trying to arxiv-ify things that would be publishable on arxiv without much additional effort.
I think that another major problem is simply that there is no one-size-fits-all intro guide. I think I saw some guides by Daniel Eth (or someone else?) and a few other people that were denser than the guide you’ve written here, and yeah the intro by Kelsey Piper is also quite good.
I’ve wondered if it could be possible/valuable to have a curated list of the best intros, and perhaps even to make a modular system, so people can customize better for specific contexts. (Or maybe having numerous good articles would be valuable if eventually someone wanted to and could use them as part of a language model prompt to help them write a guide tailored to a specific audience??)
Interesting points. I’m working on a book which is not quite a solution to your issue but hopefully goes in the same direction. And I’m now curious to see that memo :)
I was referring to external credibility if you are looking for a scientific paper with the key ideas. Secondarily, an online, modular guide is not quite the frame of the book either (although it could possible be adapted towards such a thing in the future)
+1, I would like things like that too. I agree that having much of the great object-level work in the field route through forums (alongside a lot of other material that is not so great) is probably not optimal.
I will say though that going into this, I was not particularly impressed with the suite of beginner articles out there — sans some of Kelsey Piper’s writing — and so I doubt we’re anywhere close to approaching the net-negative territory for the marginal intro piece.
One approach to this might be a soft norm of trying to arxiv-ify things that would be publishable on arxiv without much additional effort.
I think that another major problem is simply that there is no one-size-fits-all intro guide. I think I saw some guides by Daniel Eth (or someone else?) and a few other people that were denser than the guide you’ve written here, and yeah the intro by Kelsey Piper is also quite good.
I’ve wondered if it could be possible/valuable to have a curated list of the best intros, and perhaps even to make a modular system, so people can customize better for specific contexts. (Or maybe having numerous good articles would be valuable if eventually someone wanted to and could use them as part of a language model prompt to help them write a guide tailored to a specific audience??)
Interesting points. I’m working on a book which is not quite a solution to your issue but hopefully goes in the same direction.
And I’m now curious to see that memo :)
Which issue are you referring to? (External credibility?)
I don’t see a reason to not share the paper, although I will caveat that it definitely was a rushed job. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ctTGcmbmjJlsTQHWXxQmhMNqtnVFRPz10rfCGTore7g/edit
I was referring to external credibility if you are looking for a scientific paper with the key ideas. Secondarily, an online, modular guide is not quite the frame of the book either (although it could possible be adapted towards such a thing in the future)