I also think there’s a lot of value to publishing a really good collection the first time around
The EA handbook already exists, so this could be the basis for the first sequence basically immediately. Also EA concepts.
More generally, I think I disagree with the broad framing you’re using, which feels like “we’re going to get the definitive collection of essays on each topic, which we endorse”. But even if CEA manages to put together a few such sequences, I predict that this will stagnate once people aren’t working on it as hard. By contrast, a more scalable type of sequence could be something like: ask Brian Tomasik, Paul Christiano, Scott Alexander, and other prolific writers, to assemble a reading list of the top 5-10 essays they’ve written relating to EA (as well as allowing community members to propose lists of essays related to a given theme). It seems quite likely that at least some of those points have been made better elsewhere, and also that many of them are controversial topics within EA, but people should be aware of this sort of thing, and right now there’s no good mechanism for that happening except vague word of mouth or spending lots of time scrolling through blogs.
I’m sorry if my framing was misleading: When this feature goes live on the Forum, other users will be able to use it freely. CEA still wants to have its own “collections” be as close to “definitive” as we can reasonably get, with occasional updates/added material.
Meanwhile, until the feature goes live, I’m considering ways to more reliably expose Forum visitors to collections of introductory material that already exist, like the material compiled on EA.org. Maybe a pinned post, or maybe a page that shows by default to non-logged-in users; that’s still in the works.
The EA handbook already exists, so this could be the basis for the first sequence basically immediately. Also EA concepts.
More generally, I think I disagree with the broad framing you’re using, which feels like “we’re going to get the definitive collection of essays on each topic, which we endorse”. But even if CEA manages to put together a few such sequences, I predict that this will stagnate once people aren’t working on it as hard. By contrast, a more scalable type of sequence could be something like: ask Brian Tomasik, Paul Christiano, Scott Alexander, and other prolific writers, to assemble a reading list of the top 5-10 essays they’ve written relating to EA (as well as allowing community members to propose lists of essays related to a given theme). It seems quite likely that at least some of those points have been made better elsewhere, and also that many of them are controversial topics within EA, but people should be aware of this sort of thing, and right now there’s no good mechanism for that happening except vague word of mouth or spending lots of time scrolling through blogs.
I’m sorry if my framing was misleading: When this feature goes live on the Forum, other users will be able to use it freely. CEA still wants to have its own “collections” be as close to “definitive” as we can reasonably get, with occasional updates/added material.
Meanwhile, until the feature goes live, I’m considering ways to more reliably expose Forum visitors to collections of introductory material that already exist, like the material compiled on EA.org. Maybe a pinned post, or maybe a page that shows by default to non-logged-in users; that’s still in the works.