1) Joao Fabiano looked recently into acceptance likelihood for papers in the top 5 philosophical journals. It seems that 3-5% is a reasonable range. It is very hard to publish philosophy papers. It seems to be slightly harder to publish in the top philosophy journals than in Nature, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, or Science magazine, and this is after the filter of 6 positions available for 300 candidates that selects PHD candidates in philosophy (harder than Harvard medicine or economics).
2) Bostrom arguably became very influential before Superintelligence within academia and the Lesswrong world. I have frequently found academics in the fields of Philosophy of mind, ethics, bioethics, physics, and even philosophy of language who knew his name and had some idea of who he was. Bostrom is a very prolific academic in terms of paper publication, and notably he pays attention to having an open website with his ideas available to the public. I believe his success prior to Superintelligence is explained, besides sheer brilliance, by actually displaying his ideas online as well as creating the World Transhumanist Organization and using techniques like talking about normal seeming topics (the matrix, cars on the other lane) in papers which are also strategies that helped make David Chalmers, another brilliant academic, become more prominent.
3) Joao Fabiano’s inquire also found that David Lewis published, singlehandedly, 6.3% of top five journal publications. All women together published 3.6% (including Ruth Millikan, very prolific author). To me this indicates that the power law for publications is incredibly strong, with only extremely brilliant people like Lewis making the most substantial dents. The field is also male-skewed in an awkward way.
4) For people who consider themselves intellectual potentials and intend to continue in academia, my suggestion is to create a table of contents for a book, and instead of going ahead and writing the chapters, find the closest equivalent of some chapter that could become a paper, and try to write a paper about that. If you get accepted, this develops your career, and allows you to be one of the stand-outs like Ord, MacAskill and Bostrom who will end up working in the top universities. If you continue to be systematically rejected, you can still get around by publishing books and being influential in the way say Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins became influential. Since I find this to be the optimal strategy I’m aware of at the moment, it is the one I’m taking.
5) One behavior I found dangerous in the past is to “save your secret amazing idea from the world” protecting it by not testing it against other minds or putting it out for publication. Idea theft may be common in academia, but the response to that should be to simply have another better idea and carry on the work. Most ideas are too complex for non-authors to be able to steal. I think great value can come from publishing your ideas on Lesswrong (Stuart Armstrong does this) or Effective-altruism.com before transforming them into a paper, and eventually a book chapter. This is how I’ve been reasoning lately. (To put my money where my mouth is: if anyone wants to take a look at the table of contents of my academic Altruism: past, present, propagation book by the way I’m open to that, message me privately) I welcome any criticism of that blog--> Paper --> Chapter strategy.
6) Most of what I said applies to philosophy and the humanities, and I’d be interested to know if people who published in STEM fields like Paul Christiano, Nate Soares, Benja Fallenstein, Scott Aaronson and Tegmark think this is a valuable alternative there as well.
“1) Joao Fabiano looked recently into acceptance likelihood for papers in the top 5 philosophical journals. It seems that 3-5% is a reasonable range. It is very hard to publish philosophy papers. It seems to be slightly harder to publish in the top philosophy journals than in Nature, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, or Science magazine, and this is after the filter of 6 positions available for 300 candidates that selects PHD candidates in philosophy (harder than Harvard medicine or economics).”
This is a very real problem. Many people outside of philosophy do not realize how difficult it is to become an actual tenured philosopher, and even if that happens, to become a regularly-published philosopher. Philosophy itself is already highly self-selecting (highest average GRE of any grad school-bound college students), and the acceptance rates are very, very low. Further, only about half of those students who are accepted to the top PhD programs complete them. Of those who do complete them, I’d say about half (of the top programs) end up with tenure-track positions. Those who do get such positions may or may not have difficulty gaining publication, but it isn’t a certainty that their ideas will be widespread in any real way. So, for Joe Smart sitting at home on his couch, wanting his great ideas to be read by a lot of smart people, becoming a philosopher is probably a terrible way of accomplishing his goal.
“4) For people who consider themselves intellectual potentials and intend to continue in academia, my suggestion is to create a table of contents for a book, and instead of going ahead and writing the chapters, find the closest equivalent of some chapter that could become a paper, and try to write a paper about that. If you get accepted, this develops your career, and allows you to be one of the stand-outs like Ord, MacAskill and Bostrom who will end up working in the top universities. If you continue to be systematically rejected, you can still get around by publishing books and being influential in the way say Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins became influential. Since I find this to be the optimal strategy I’m aware of at the moment, it is the one I’m taking.”
This seems like a good suggestion. I do still think that good ideas can be published in journals, and books should contain journal-worthy ideas, but the journal process can be quite slow. This may be a way to kill two birds with one stone.
As a reference, I wrote a paper in 2012 that is going to be published in the next couple of months. I do not hold a PhD, but my co-author does. Our paper was presented at a very prestigious conference (multiple household names were also presenting, including a couple of superstars). We were rejected by five journals before we were accepted, and some of those that rejected us were less prestigious than the one that eventually accepted us. It was quite a long process, and I am certain that it is not the ideal way to advance one’s EA-related message.
Some additional related points:
1) Joao Fabiano looked recently into acceptance likelihood for papers in the top 5 philosophical journals. It seems that 3-5% is a reasonable range. It is very hard to publish philosophy papers. It seems to be slightly harder to publish in the top philosophy journals than in Nature, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, or Science magazine, and this is after the filter of 6 positions available for 300 candidates that selects PHD candidates in philosophy (harder than Harvard medicine or economics).
2) Bostrom arguably became very influential before Superintelligence within academia and the Lesswrong world. I have frequently found academics in the fields of Philosophy of mind, ethics, bioethics, physics, and even philosophy of language who knew his name and had some idea of who he was. Bostrom is a very prolific academic in terms of paper publication, and notably he pays attention to having an open website with his ideas available to the public. I believe his success prior to Superintelligence is explained, besides sheer brilliance, by actually displaying his ideas online as well as creating the World Transhumanist Organization and using techniques like talking about normal seeming topics (the matrix, cars on the other lane) in papers which are also strategies that helped make David Chalmers, another brilliant academic, become more prominent.
3) Joao Fabiano’s inquire also found that David Lewis published, singlehandedly, 6.3% of top five journal publications. All women together published 3.6% (including Ruth Millikan, very prolific author). To me this indicates that the power law for publications is incredibly strong, with only extremely brilliant people like Lewis making the most substantial dents. The field is also male-skewed in an awkward way.
4) For people who consider themselves intellectual potentials and intend to continue in academia, my suggestion is to create a table of contents for a book, and instead of going ahead and writing the chapters, find the closest equivalent of some chapter that could become a paper, and try to write a paper about that. If you get accepted, this develops your career, and allows you to be one of the stand-outs like Ord, MacAskill and Bostrom who will end up working in the top universities. If you continue to be systematically rejected, you can still get around by publishing books and being influential in the way say Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins became influential. Since I find this to be the optimal strategy I’m aware of at the moment, it is the one I’m taking.
5) One behavior I found dangerous in the past is to “save your secret amazing idea from the world” protecting it by not testing it against other minds or putting it out for publication. Idea theft may be common in academia, but the response to that should be to simply have another better idea and carry on the work. Most ideas are too complex for non-authors to be able to steal. I think great value can come from publishing your ideas on Lesswrong (Stuart Armstrong does this) or Effective-altruism.com before transforming them into a paper, and eventually a book chapter. This is how I’ve been reasoning lately. (To put my money where my mouth is: if anyone wants to take a look at the table of contents of my academic Altruism: past, present, propagation book by the way I’m open to that, message me privately) I welcome any criticism of that blog--> Paper --> Chapter strategy.
6) Most of what I said applies to philosophy and the humanities, and I’d be interested to know if people who published in STEM fields like Paul Christiano, Nate Soares, Benja Fallenstein, Scott Aaronson and Tegmark think this is a valuable alternative there as well.
“1) Joao Fabiano looked recently into acceptance likelihood for papers in the top 5 philosophical journals. It seems that 3-5% is a reasonable range. It is very hard to publish philosophy papers. It seems to be slightly harder to publish in the top philosophy journals than in Nature, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, or Science magazine, and this is after the filter of 6 positions available for 300 candidates that selects PHD candidates in philosophy (harder than Harvard medicine or economics).”
This is a very real problem. Many people outside of philosophy do not realize how difficult it is to become an actual tenured philosopher, and even if that happens, to become a regularly-published philosopher. Philosophy itself is already highly self-selecting (highest average GRE of any grad school-bound college students), and the acceptance rates are very, very low. Further, only about half of those students who are accepted to the top PhD programs complete them. Of those who do complete them, I’d say about half (of the top programs) end up with tenure-track positions. Those who do get such positions may or may not have difficulty gaining publication, but it isn’t a certainty that their ideas will be widespread in any real way. So, for Joe Smart sitting at home on his couch, wanting his great ideas to be read by a lot of smart people, becoming a philosopher is probably a terrible way of accomplishing his goal.
“4) For people who consider themselves intellectual potentials and intend to continue in academia, my suggestion is to create a table of contents for a book, and instead of going ahead and writing the chapters, find the closest equivalent of some chapter that could become a paper, and try to write a paper about that. If you get accepted, this develops your career, and allows you to be one of the stand-outs like Ord, MacAskill and Bostrom who will end up working in the top universities. If you continue to be systematically rejected, you can still get around by publishing books and being influential in the way say Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins became influential. Since I find this to be the optimal strategy I’m aware of at the moment, it is the one I’m taking.”
This seems like a good suggestion. I do still think that good ideas can be published in journals, and books should contain journal-worthy ideas, but the journal process can be quite slow. This may be a way to kill two birds with one stone.
As a reference, I wrote a paper in 2012 that is going to be published in the next couple of months. I do not hold a PhD, but my co-author does. Our paper was presented at a very prestigious conference (multiple household names were also presenting, including a couple of superstars). We were rejected by five journals before we were accepted, and some of those that rejected us were less prestigious than the one that eventually accepted us. It was quite a long process, and I am certain that it is not the ideal way to advance one’s EA-related message.