the current average is at EA as a knowledge space being 75% principles/values and only 25% concrete knowledge
Introduction:
What We Owe The Future is heavily upvoted by those who already read it
Removing Factfulness from top line of books as there have been substantial critiques of New Optimism “people on both sides of the ‘is the world getting better’ debate can try to make the world better.”
HPMOR should not be included in the introductory section “it teaches a certain mindset that fits inside Effective Altruism, but fails to introduce many important parts of the community”, the style does not fit the values of a serious movement (person likes it a lot, though)
Ethics:
maybe replace ‘The Moral Landscape’ by Sam Harris with ‘Think’ by Simon Blackburn
Moral Tribes is extremely digestible for a philosophy book, much more so than Practical Ethics
Current ethics list is unfocused: “Parfit is an important ethicist and reasons and persons is important. But he isn’t really more EA than many other ethicists. On Liberty is not really that EA-relevant. Utilitarianism is good. I like Hedonic Imperative but Pearce’s writing style is a turn-off for many, I think. I’d strongly prefer collections of papers/articles than a list of full books. Reading full books is just a terrible strategy for getting a handle on important issues in ethics. If it has to be books, than I would use books that are collections of papers. Particularly: (1) The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics. And (2) Greaves & Pummer’s Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues. (But I think you could do even better than these collections if you handpicked papers.) To these I would add (3) Mill’s Utilitarianism (4) Singer’s Expanding Circle. Strongly prefer a small list. Apologies that these thoughts are dashed off and unorganized.”
Rationality:
redundant information, strongly prefer culling all but maybe one or two.
The Scout Mindset was fantastic, and of all the EA books I’ve read, it’s probably the one I’m most inclined to recommend to pretty much everyone I know.
Once again, I just think it’s a bad idea to include all these books that are only tangentially related to EA, but are part of niche subcultures with their own worldviews. We’re not going to get a diverse community with fresh ideas if we filter for people who have a similar culture to current EAs.
Freakonomics is not important to read. It’s just some fun cases of applied economics. It’s not an efficient learning tool and it isn’t focused on important issues. It is entertaining. I don’t think microeconomics is important because it helps with entrepreneurial decisions; these should maybe be considered separately. Quantitative economics is at least as important as micro. Prefer a culled list. Possibly culled to zero.
Black Swan contains some helpful stuff, but it is off-puttingly polemical and not focused on extinction risks. Would make sense in a very large library maybe.
Can’t really see a justification for including Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I think this list is too long. I don’t think EA has a unified or consistent political ideology for short-term nation-states; I think this is a good thing and don’t want a list that implies that EA does have one.
Add Radical Markets by Posner and Weyl and Nudge
AI:
The Alignment Problem, while I would say is overall good, does jump around quite a bit narratively. I would want to read other books in this category before recommending it too strongly.
“Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” is the only book I’m familiar with on the list that I dislike. The vast majority of people need something more accessible.
Animal Liberation was a great “why” book, The End of Animal Farming was a great “how” book. They serve different purposes. Overall, I found Animal Liberation more compelling than The End of Animal Farming, though it is quite a bit denser.
Community and Soft Skill:
How to Make Friends and Influence People
Happiness:
Daniel Haybron’s work on happiness is the best I’ve come across by far: Happiness and Well-Being: Integrating Research Across the Disciplines; The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, 2008); Happiness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Transhumanism:
Haven’t read ending aging but this seems like a preoccupation of the rationalist community that makes little sense by EA-lights? I’d prefer to get rid of this category.
Other
Would be surprised if anything beyond what’s included in the main EA recommendations is helpful here. Cull!
Biographies of changemakers seem like not particularly important reads?
Are there categories missing?
BioSecurity/Global Catastrophic Biological risks
I think you did an extremely thorough job. Well done!
Connections to other philosophies that value EA principles; ask e.g. Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish EA groups for recommendations
Should a category be removed?
I think people will assume the importance of an issue is proportional to the number of books included in it on the diagram. As a result, I would remove all object-level categories save the most important, and I would cull within them dramatically. I also think presenting object-level books seems like an endorsement, when mostly they are probably intended as jumping-off points for future thinking.
In general, I view MBA-style business strategy books as a negative signal. Of the philosophy books, Parfit is the only positive signal for me. The others mostly scan as popular philosophy.
I get a negative impression of people who are really into rationalist books and not much else—convinced of their own superiority, narrow-minded unless the idea is from a trusted rationalist guy, etc.
anything important missing?
Strangers Drowning, by Larissa MacFarquhar
Which books if understood by others would make you more confident in collaborating with them?
The Scout Mindset, Human Compatible, The Scout Mindset, anything introductory, Waking Up
Thank you to the many of you who have filled out the Google form as an alternative to writing a comment!
Here are some great points made:
the current average is at EA as a knowledge space being 75% principles/values and only 25% concrete knowledge
Introduction:
What We Owe The Future is heavily upvoted by those who already read it
Removing Factfulness from top line of books as there have been substantial critiques of New Optimism “people on both sides of the ‘is the world getting better’ debate can try to make the world better.”
HPMOR should not be included in the introductory section “it teaches a certain mindset that fits inside Effective Altruism, but fails to introduce many important parts of the community”, the style does not fit the values of a serious movement (person likes it a lot, though)
Ethics:
maybe replace ‘The Moral Landscape’ by Sam Harris with ‘Think’ by Simon Blackburn
Moral Tribes is extremely digestible for a philosophy book, much more so than Practical Ethics
Current ethics list is unfocused: “Parfit is an important ethicist and reasons and persons is important. But he isn’t really more EA than many other ethicists. On Liberty is not really that EA-relevant. Utilitarianism is good. I like Hedonic Imperative but Pearce’s writing style is a turn-off for many, I think. I’d strongly prefer collections of papers/articles than a list of full books. Reading full books is just a terrible strategy for getting a handle on important issues in ethics. If it has to be books, than I would use books that are collections of papers. Particularly: (1) The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics. And (2) Greaves & Pummer’s Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues. (But I think you could do even better than these collections if you handpicked papers.) To these I would add (3) Mill’s Utilitarianism (4) Singer’s Expanding Circle. Strongly prefer a small list. Apologies that these thoughts are dashed off and unorganized.”
Rationality:
redundant information, strongly prefer culling all but maybe one or two.
The Scout Mindset was fantastic, and of all the EA books I’ve read, it’s probably the one I’m most inclined to recommend to pretty much everyone I know.
Once again, I just think it’s a bad idea to include all these books that are only tangentially related to EA, but are part of niche subcultures with their own worldviews. We’re not going to get a diverse community with fresh ideas if we filter for people who have a similar culture to current EAs.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/handbook-rationality this collection (The Handbook of Rationality) is a more information-dense path to learning this stuff I think. There are likely equally good subs
Economics:
Add Nudge and Make It Stick
Freakonomics is not important to read. It’s just some fun cases of applied economics. It’s not an efficient learning tool and it isn’t focused on important issues. It is entertaining. I don’t think microeconomics is important because it helps with entrepreneurial decisions; these should maybe be considered separately. Quantitative economics is at least as important as micro. Prefer a culled list. Possibly culled to zero.
Black Swan contains some helpful stuff, but it is off-puttingly polemical and not focused on extinction risks. Would make sense in a very large library maybe.
Can’t really see a justification for including Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I think this list is too long. I don’t think EA has a unified or consistent political ideology for short-term nation-states; I think this is a good thing and don’t want a list that implies that EA does have one.
Add Radical Markets by Posner and Weyl and Nudge
AI:
The Alignment Problem, while I would say is overall good, does jump around quite a bit narratively. I would want to read other books in this category before recommending it too strongly.
“Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” is the only book I’m familiar with on the list that I dislike. The vast majority of people need something more accessible.
Animal Liberation was a great “why” book, The End of Animal Farming was a great “how” book. They serve different purposes. Overall, I found Animal Liberation more compelling than The End of Animal Farming, though it is quite a bit denser.
Community and Soft Skill:
How to Make Friends and Influence People
Happiness:
Daniel Haybron’s work on happiness is the best I’ve come across by far: Happiness and Well-Being: Integrating Research Across the Disciplines; The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford University Press, 2008); Happiness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Transhumanism:
Haven’t read ending aging but this seems like a preoccupation of the rationalist community that makes little sense by EA-lights? I’d prefer to get rid of this category.
Other
Would be surprised if anything beyond what’s included in the main EA recommendations is helpful here. Cull!
Biographies of changemakers seem like not particularly important reads?
Are there categories missing?
BioSecurity/Global Catastrophic Biological risks
I think you did an extremely thorough job. Well done!
Connections to other philosophies that value EA principles; ask e.g. Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish EA groups for recommendations
Should a category be removed?
I think people will assume the importance of an issue is proportional to the number of books included in it on the diagram. As a result, I would remove all object-level categories save the most important, and I would cull within them dramatically. I also think presenting object-level books seems like an endorsement, when mostly they are probably intended as jumping-off points for future thinking.
In general, I view MBA-style business strategy books as a negative signal. Of the philosophy books, Parfit is the only positive signal for me. The others mostly scan as popular philosophy.
I get a negative impression of people who are really into rationalist books and not much else—convinced of their own superiority, narrow-minded unless the idea is from a trusted rationalist guy, etc.
anything important missing?
Strangers Drowning, by Larissa MacFarquhar
Which books if understood by others would make you more confident in collaborating with them?
The Scout Mindset, Human Compatible, The Scout Mindset, anything introductory, Waking Up