Low-Commitment Less Wrong Book (EG Article) Club
EDIT: The first post is here. Subscribe to the Less Wrong for EA tag for notifications of future posts.
AllAmericanBreakfast brought up the idea of a low-commitment LW book club. I’d like to start the ball rolling and volunteer to at least help get it started (I am also happy for someone else to do it, but I want to make sure it happens). I invite anyone who’s interested to comment below. Ideas for how it could work are also welcome. I suppose it could be as simple as a weekly link post that we comment on on the EA forum—that would certainly be low-commitment.
I’m currently doing the in-depth virtual program and enjoying the Zoom discussions. Not as low-commitment, but when that ends at the end of February, I would have time to host something like a weekly Zoom discussion of an article or two. It seems like that would work best for ~5 people, so if more were interested there could be multiple Zooms with multiple hosts.
And Zooms and link posts are certainly not mutually exclusive.
My current plan is:
Let people comment here with ideas/feedback until Monday.
Every MondayWeekly, post something from a list I keep, starting with links in the comments of this post, in comments below or future posts, or dug up on my own if it comes to that.Use the
tag LCLWBCcome up with a better tag for this and future posts.Invite others to make their own posts.
Offer to try to organize a Zoom discussion if >3 people are interested.
Please chime in if you have any ideas or criticisms. I can’t see any reason why this would be a bad idea, but I’d be very interested to know of any.
- What (standalone) LessWrong posts would you recommend to most EA community members? by (9 Feb 2022 0:31 UTC; 67 points)
- What (standalone) LessWrong posts would you recommend to most EA community members? by (9 Feb 2022 0:31 UTC; 67 points)
- 's comment on What (standalone) LessWrong posts would you recommend to most EA community members? by (10 Feb 2022 15:29 UTC; 4 points)
So I think I spent too much time thinking about the name, but, in the end I think it works well to have something simple and short that gets the basic idea across, with more details given in the post body/tag description.
I think “Less Wrong for EA” accomplishes this. Each post title can be of the format “LW4EA: Post Title from Less Wrong” and the tag “Less Wrong for EA” isn’t overly long either.
Below is what I plan to write in the post body (I will also edit/rewrite the tag). I would love any feedback.
--
This link post is part of Less Wrong for EA, a Less Wrong repost & low-commitment discussion group (inspired by this comment). Each week I will revive an EA-relevant post from the Less Wrong Archives, more or less at random, from a list I started from the comments here (additional suggestions welcome via PM or in the comments).
Please feel free to,
Discuss in the comments
Subscribe to the Less Wrong for EA tag to be notified of future posts
Tag other Less Wrong reposts with Less Wrong for EA.
Initially, I talked about hosting Zoom discussion for those that were interested, but I think it’s a bit more than I can take on right now (not so low-commitment). If anyone wants to organize one, comment or PM me and I will be happy to coordinate for future posts.
For the tag description, I am thinking something like
“Any EA-relevant LessWrong post, including posts from the weekly Less Wrong repost & low-commitment discussion group.”
I was just wondering about the existence of such a project. Fantastic that you’re taking initiative! There are many old posts still holding contemporary relevance that might benefit from such “revivals”. Suggestions:
Maybe a title like “LW Post (Revival) Club” might be more accessible?
You could also think of connecting this to the book club/s to gain more traction there, since this represents a large overlap and is essentially the main target audience.
This seems obvious, but putting an 80⁄20 effort into some promotion might really be worth it/a deciding factor for this project’s success or failure (e.g. putting it up on the EA newsletter)
I will put a bit more thought into the title/tag.
Can you point me to book club information? I am not familiar.
I agree about promotion, and am grateful for suggestions, but I may focus on doing a post or two to refine the concept before delving into much promotion.
My current plan is (see main post)
I really like the idea of experimenting with different kinds of engagement via the Forum, especially the idea of a drip ! Suggestions:
Rename the tag name a bit more intuitive e.g. “LW Article Club 2022” or something. (Make people more likely to participate)
In each linkpost :
A top level post explaining the idea / project (make it as easy as possible for people to participate)
I could help draft something / give comments)
In the post:
Explain what you’ll do (post every monday)
Explain how people can participate (comment on post / linkpost posts they think are valuable and they think there should be more engagement with)
Suggest subscribing to the tag so they can get email notificatons when a new post is published
(Once finalized) Edit the tag description with 2 lines explaining what the club is (format, goals)
As for the zoom calls I don’t have any thoughts on that—I think you’d probably get enough interest to host them. I’m personally more excited about experimenting with this new format.
I will put a bit more thought into the title/tag and comment here with my ideas for them.
I already had something like #2 in mind. I will also post here/pm you for feedback.
Did you see the tag description I wrote? I will think about it more after final title/tag. Feel free to suggest changes/additions.
(Suggesting adding this to the top-level post so people can quickly see the update!)
I think I misunderstood what you meant here at first. Adding it now.
I would be interested in a Zoom discussion.
Noted. I think I will hold off on the Zoom thing for the first post or two so I can focus on getting them right. I will put a note in each post about signing up for Zooms once I am doing them. I am considering how to handle it (encouraging others to organize Zooms?) if there are more than ~5 people interested.
It seems like getting the name/tag details right is going to be important and I don’t have too much time to think about that before Monday, so I will probably wait to do the first post. I expect to be able to iron those details out next week.
Also interested, and I like the idea of link-posting with comments! Very low-energy and hopefully can allow more people to get involved and expose people to new ideas over time.
I’d be up for the reading and comment writing part (will see if it works out time-wise), probably not so much for zoom. Nice idea and thanks for taking the initiative!
I would be interested. I am part of an EA The Precipice reading group right now, but going forward I would enjoy some conversations around some other books/ideas. I am all about the low commitment in life.
I’m interested as well, for participating or helping with organization.
Idea when project is up to speed; if multiple groups are operating at the same time, have a central theme that all each group focuses on and at the end of a “sequence” of these a larger article could be written on the collective insights developed. Something along those lines.
I guess I was using the term “group” in a loose sense—maybe it’s not the right word, as my plan would not require signing up or joining or anything (keeping in the spirit of low commitment), just an article posted each week that people can comment on freely.
That’s about all I have time for at the moment. If someone wants to do something more formal in parallel, I am all for it. You are welcome to use the tag (which I will update soon), or I am happy to coordinate if that would be useful. If there’s not much engagement with the posts, that might indicate something more structured would have more success.
Ah, I see. Well, I’m all in for the lower commitment at this point. Will you be advertising the start on this post?
Sure thing!
The first post is here.
I would also be interested. I haven’t read very many LW articles and I don’t know very many people here, so it would be nice to get caught up in the context of a discussion.
First post is here.
I believe I’ve converted this to a normal post—please let me know if you see any issues.
Looks good thanks!