Here’s a crazy idea. I haven’t run it by any EAIF people yet.
I want to have a program to fund people to write book reviews and post them to the EA Forum or LessWrong. (This idea came out of a conversation with a bunch of people at a retreat; I can’t remember exactly whose idea it was.)
Basic structure:
Someone picks a book they want to review.
Optionally, they email me asking how on-topic I think the book is (to reduce the probability of not getting the prize later).
They write a review, and send it to me.
If it’s the kind of review I want, I give them $500 in return for them posting the review to EA Forum or LW with a “This post sponsored by the EAIF” banner at the top. (I’d also love to set up an impact purchase thing but that’s probably too complicated).
If I don’t want to give them the money, they can do whatever with the review.
What books are on topic: Anything of interest to people who want to have a massive altruistic impact on the world. More specifically:
Things directly related to traditional EA topics
Things about the world more generally. Eg macrohistory, how do governments work, The Doomsday Machine, history of science (eg Asimov’s “A Short History of Chemistry”)
I think that books about self-help, productivity, or skill-building (eg management) are dubiously on topic.
Goals:
I think that these book reviews might be directly useful. There are many topics where I’d love to know the basic EA-relevant takeaways, especially when combined with basic fact-checking.
It might encourage people to practice useful skills, like writing, quickly learning about new topics, and thinking through what topics would be useful to know more about.
I think it would be healthy for EA’s culture. I worry sometimes that EAs aren’t sufficiently interested in learning facts about the world that aren’t directly related to EA stuff. I think that this might be improved both by people writing these reviews and people reading them.
Conversely, sometimes I worry that rationalists are too interested in thinking about the world by introspection or weird analogies relative to learning many facts about different aspects of the world; I think book reviews would maybe be a healthier way to direct energy towards intellectual development.
It might surface some talented writers and thinkers who weren’t otherwise known to EA.
It might produce good content on the EA Forum and LW that engages intellectually curious people.
Suggested elements of a book review:
One paragraph summary of the book
How compelling you found the book’s thesis, and why
The main takeaways that relate to vastly improving the world, with emphasis on the surprising ones
I worry sometimes that EAs aren’t sufficiently interested in learning facts about the world that aren’t directly related to EA stuff.
I share this concern, and I think a culture with more book reviews is a great way to achieve that (I’ve been happy to see all of Michael Aird’s book summaries for that reason).
CEA briefly considered paying for book reviews (I was asked to write this review as a test of that idea). IIRC, the goal at the time was more about getting more engagement from people on the periphery of EA by creating EA-related content they’d find interesting for other reasons. But book reviews as a push toward levelling up more involved people // changing EA culture is a different angle, and one I like a lot.
One suggestion: I’d want the epistemic spot checks, or something similar, to be mandatory. Many interesting books fail the basic test of “is the author routinely saying true things?”, and I think a good truth-oriented book review should check for that.
One suggestion: I’d want the epistemic spot checks, or something similar, to be mandatory. Many interesting books fail the basic test of “is the author routinely saying true things?”, and I think a good truth-oriented book review should check for that.
I think that this may make sense / probably makes sense for receiving payment for book reviews. But I think I’d be opposed to discouraging people from just posting book summaries/reviews/notes in general unless they do this.
This is because I think it’s possible to create useful book notes posts in only ~30 mins of extra time on top of the time one spends reading the book and making Anki cards anyway (assuming someone is making Anki cards as they read, which I’d suggest they do). (That time includes writing key takeaways from memory or adapting them from rough notes, copying the cards into the editor and formatting them, etc.) Given that, I think it’s worthwhile for me to make such posts. But even doubling that time might make it no longer worthwhile, given how stretched my time is.
Me doing an epistemic spot check would also be useful for me anyway, but I don’t think useful enough to justify the time, relative to focusing on my main projects whenever I’m at a computer, listening to books while I do chores etc., and churning out very quick notes posts when I finish.
All that said, I think highlighting the idea of doing epistemic spot checks, and highlighting why it’s useful, would be good. And Michael2019 and MichaelEarly2020 probably should’ve done such epistemic spot checks and included them in book notes posts (as at that point I knew less and my time was less stretched), as probably should various other people. And maybe I should still do it now for the books that are especially relevant to my main projects.
I think that this may make sense / probably makes sense for receiving payment for book reviews. But I think I’d be opposed to discouraging people from just posting book summaries/reviews/notes in general unless they do this.
Yep, agreed. If someone is creating e.g. an EAIF-funded book review, I want it to feel very “solid”, like I can really trust what they’re saying and what the author is saying.
But I also want Forum users to feel comfortable writing less time-intensive content (like your book notes). That’s why we encourage epistemic statuses, have Shortform as an option, etc.
(Though it helps if, even for a shorter set of notes, someone can add a note about their process. As an example: “Copying over the most interesting bits and my immediate impressions. I haven’t fact-checked anything, looked for other perspectives, etc.”)
Yeah, I entirely agree, and your comment makes me realise that, although I make my process fairly obvious in my posts, I should probably in future add almost the exact sentences “I haven’t fact-checked anything, looked for other perspectives, etc.”, just to make that extra explicit. (I didn’t interpret your comment as directed at my posts specifically—I’m just reporting a useful takeaway for me personally.)
Yeah, I really like this. SSC currently already has a book-review contest running on SSC, and maybe LW and the EAF could do something similar? (Probably not a contest, but something that creates a bit of momentum behind the idea of doing this)
I’d be interested in this. I’ve been posting book reviews of the books I read to Facebook—mostly for my own benefit. These have mostly been written quickly, but if there was a decent chance of getting $500 I could pick out the most relevant books and relisten to them and then rewrite them.
I haven’t read any of those reviews you’ve posted on FB, but I’d guess you should in any case post them to the Forum! Even if you don’t have time for any further editing or polishing.
I say this because:
This sort of thing often seems useful in general
People can just ignore them if they’re not useful, or not relevant to them
Maybe there being a decent chance of you getting $500 for them and/or you relistening and rewriting would be even better—I’m just saying that this simple step of putting them on the Forum already seems net positive anyway.
Could be as top-level posts or as shortforms, depending on the length, substantiveness, polish, etc.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to focus on books like those in this list of “most commonly planned to read books that have not been read by anyone yet”
I would also ask these people to optionally write or improve a summary of the book in Wikipedia if it has an Wikipedia article (or should have one). In many cases, it’s not only EAs who would do more good if they knew ideas in a given book, especially when it’s on a subject like pandemics or global warming rather than topics relevant to non-altruistic work too like management or productivity. When you google a book, Wikipedia is often the first result and so these articles receive a quite lot of traffic (you can see here how much traffic a given article receives).
That might achieve the “these might be directly useful goal” and “produce interesting content” goals, if the reviewers knew about how to summarize the books from an EA perspective, how to do epistemic spot checks, and so on, which they probably don’t. It wouldn’t achieve any of the other goals, though.
I wonder if there are better ways to encourage and reward talented writers to look for outside ideas—although I agree book reviews are attractive in their simplicity!
I also just think in any case more people should post their notes, key takeaways, and (if they make them) Anki cards to the Forum, as either top-level posts or shortforms. I think this need only take ~30 mins of extra time on top of the time they spend reading or note-taking or whatever for their own benefit. (But doing what you propose would still add value by incentivising more effortful and even more useful versions of this.)
There are many topics where I’d love to know the basic EA-relevant takeaways [...]
The main takeaways that relate to vastly improving the world, with emphasis on the surprising ones
Yeah, I think this is worth emphasising, since:
Those are things existing, non-EA summaries of the books are less likely to provide
Those are things that even another EA reading the same book might not think of
Coming up with key takeaways is an analytical exercise and will often draw on specific other knowledge, intuitions, experiences, etc. the reader has
Quick take is this sounds like a pretty good bet, mostly for the indirect effects. You could do it with a ‘contest’ framing instead of a ‘I pay you to produce book reviews’ framing; idk whether that’s meaningfully better.
Here’s a crazy idea. I haven’t run it by any EAIF people yet.
I want to have a program to fund people to write book reviews and post them to the EA Forum or LessWrong. (This idea came out of a conversation with a bunch of people at a retreat; I can’t remember exactly whose idea it was.)
Basic structure:
Someone picks a book they want to review.
Optionally, they email me asking how on-topic I think the book is (to reduce the probability of not getting the prize later).
They write a review, and send it to me.
If it’s the kind of review I want, I give them $500 in return for them posting the review to EA Forum or LW with a “This post sponsored by the EAIF” banner at the top. (I’d also love to set up an impact purchase thing but that’s probably too complicated).
If I don’t want to give them the money, they can do whatever with the review.
What books are on topic: Anything of interest to people who want to have a massive altruistic impact on the world. More specifically:
Things directly related to traditional EA topics
Things about the world more generally. Eg macrohistory, how do governments work, The Doomsday Machine, history of science (eg Asimov’s “A Short History of Chemistry”)
I think that books about self-help, productivity, or skill-building (eg management) are dubiously on topic.
Goals:
I think that these book reviews might be directly useful. There are many topics where I’d love to know the basic EA-relevant takeaways, especially when combined with basic fact-checking.
It might encourage people to practice useful skills, like writing, quickly learning about new topics, and thinking through what topics would be useful to know more about.
I think it would be healthy for EA’s culture. I worry sometimes that EAs aren’t sufficiently interested in learning facts about the world that aren’t directly related to EA stuff. I think that this might be improved both by people writing these reviews and people reading them.
Conversely, sometimes I worry that rationalists are too interested in thinking about the world by introspection or weird analogies relative to learning many facts about different aspects of the world; I think book reviews would maybe be a healthier way to direct energy towards intellectual development.
It might surface some talented writers and thinkers who weren’t otherwise known to EA.
It might produce good content on the EA Forum and LW that engages intellectually curious people.
Suggested elements of a book review:
One paragraph summary of the book
How compelling you found the book’s thesis, and why
The main takeaways that relate to vastly improving the world, with emphasis on the surprising ones
Optionally, epistemic spot checks
Optionally, “book adversarial collaborations”, where you actually review two different books on the same topic.
I share this concern, and I think a culture with more book reviews is a great way to achieve that (I’ve been happy to see all of Michael Aird’s book summaries for that reason).
CEA briefly considered paying for book reviews (I was asked to write this review as a test of that idea). IIRC, the goal at the time was more about getting more engagement from people on the periphery of EA by creating EA-related content they’d find interesting for other reasons. But book reviews as a push toward levelling up more involved people // changing EA culture is a different angle, and one I like a lot.
One suggestion: I’d want the epistemic spot checks, or something similar, to be mandatory. Many interesting books fail the basic test of “is the author routinely saying true things?”, and I think a good truth-oriented book review should check for that.
I think that this may make sense / probably makes sense for receiving payment for book reviews. But I think I’d be opposed to discouraging people from just posting book summaries/reviews/notes in general unless they do this.
This is because I think it’s possible to create useful book notes posts in only ~30 mins of extra time on top of the time one spends reading the book and making Anki cards anyway (assuming someone is making Anki cards as they read, which I’d suggest they do). (That time includes writing key takeaways from memory or adapting them from rough notes, copying the cards into the editor and formatting them, etc.) Given that, I think it’s worthwhile for me to make such posts. But even doubling that time might make it no longer worthwhile, given how stretched my time is.
Me doing an epistemic spot check would also be useful for me anyway, but I don’t think useful enough to justify the time, relative to focusing on my main projects whenever I’m at a computer, listening to books while I do chores etc., and churning out very quick notes posts when I finish.
All that said, I think highlighting the idea of doing epistemic spot checks, and highlighting why it’s useful, would be good. And Michael2019 and MichaelEarly2020 probably should’ve done such epistemic spot checks and included them in book notes posts (as at that point I knew less and my time was less stretched), as probably should various other people. And maybe I should still do it now for the books that are especially relevant to my main projects.
Yep, agreed. If someone is creating e.g. an EAIF-funded book review, I want it to feel very “solid”, like I can really trust what they’re saying and what the author is saying.
But I also want Forum users to feel comfortable writing less time-intensive content (like your book notes). That’s why we encourage epistemic statuses, have Shortform as an option, etc.
(Though it helps if, even for a shorter set of notes, someone can add a note about their process. As an example: “Copying over the most interesting bits and my immediate impressions. I haven’t fact-checked anything, looked for other perspectives, etc.”)
Yeah, I entirely agree, and your comment makes me realise that, although I make my process fairly obvious in my posts, I should probably in future add almost the exact sentences “I haven’t fact-checked anything, looked for other perspectives, etc.”, just to make that extra explicit. (I didn’t interpret your comment as directed at my posts specifically—I’m just reporting a useful takeaway for me personally.)
I wonder if there’s something in between these two points:
they could check the most important 1-3 claims the author makes.
they could include the kind of evidence and links for all claims that are made so readers can quickly check themselves
Yeah, I really like this. SSC currently already has a book-review contest running on SSC, and maybe LW and the EAF could do something similar? (Probably not a contest, but something that creates a bit of momentum behind the idea of doing this)
This does seem like a good model to try.
I’d be interested in this. I’ve been posting book reviews of the books I read to Facebook—mostly for my own benefit. These have mostly been written quickly, but if there was a decent chance of getting $500 I could pick out the most relevant books and relisten to them and then rewrite them.
I haven’t read any of those reviews you’ve posted on FB, but I’d guess you should in any case post them to the Forum! Even if you don’t have time for any further editing or polishing.
I say this because:
This sort of thing often seems useful in general
People can just ignore them if they’re not useful, or not relevant to them
See also
Maybe there being a decent chance of you getting $500 for them and/or you relistening and rewriting would be even better—I’m just saying that this simple step of putting them on the Forum already seems net positive anyway.
Could be as top-level posts or as shortforms, depending on the length, substantiveness, polish, etc.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to focus on books like those in this list of “most commonly planned to read books that have not been read by anyone yet”
I would also ask these people to optionally write or improve a summary of the book in Wikipedia if it has an Wikipedia article (or should have one). In many cases, it’s not only EAs who would do more good if they knew ideas in a given book, especially when it’s on a subject like pandemics or global warming rather than topics relevant to non-altruistic work too like management or productivity. When you google a book, Wikipedia is often the first result and so these articles receive a quite lot of traffic (you can see here how much traffic a given article receives).
I’ve thought about this before and I would also like to see this happen.
You can already pay for book reviews—what would make these different?
That might achieve the “these might be directly useful goal” and “produce interesting content” goals, if the reviewers knew about how to summarize the books from an EA perspective, how to do epistemic spot checks, and so on, which they probably don’t. It wouldn’t achieve any of the other goals, though.
I wonder if there are better ways to encourage and reward talented writers to look for outside ideas—although I agree book reviews are attractive in their simplicity!
For example: https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries https://fourminutebooks.com/book-summaries/ https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/
Yeah, this seems good to me.
I also just think in any case more people should post their notes, key takeaways, and (if they make them) Anki cards to the Forum, as either top-level posts or shortforms. I think this need only take ~30 mins of extra time on top of the time they spend reading or note-taking or whatever for their own benefit. (But doing what you propose would still add value by incentivising more effortful and even more useful versions of this.)
Yeah, I think this is worth emphasising, since:
Those are things existing, non-EA summaries of the books are less likely to provide
Those are things that even another EA reading the same book might not think of
Coming up with key takeaways is an analytical exercise and will often draw on specific other knowledge, intuitions, experiences, etc. the reader has
Also, readers of this shortform may find posts tagged effective altruism books interesting.
Quick take is this sounds like a pretty good bet, mostly for the indirect effects. You could do it with a ‘contest’ framing instead of a ‘I pay you to produce book reviews’ framing; idk whether that’s meaningfully better.
I don’t think it’s crazy at all. I think this sounds pretty good.