Quick thought: I think it might actually be pretty high impact, and clearly worth the relatively low time/āmoney required, for someone to do pretty good human readings of these and release them as episodes in one podcast feed.
This is based on things like:
how successful Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has been as an outreach tool + my guess that there being a podcast version helped with that
how successful other podcasts (esp. the 80k podcast) seem to have been as an outreach tool + my guess that itās plausible similar could occur with fiction
how much I appreciate having things like the Nonlinear Library + my guess that a nontrivial fraction of other potential high impact EAs who havenāt heard gotten into EA would be the same + my guess that that would generalise to or is even stronger for fiction than for nonfiction
We could instead have machine-read versions. But Iād guess that, for fiction as an outreach tool, human-read versions would be sufficiently more appealing and engaging that itās worth the extra time/āmoney.
(I havenāt tried to verify any of the above, e.g. havenāt checked how many high impact people got into EA/ārationality via the HPMOR podcast as opposed to reading it.)
EDIT: Also, if that seems to go well, it may well be worth following that with:
Recording many/āall of the entries that arenāt mentioned in this post
Doing more to encourage further creative writing like this than weād otherwise do, because now we now we have an additional channel to put it into that may draw people into EA
E.g., this could update us in favour of running another competition sooner, or having a monthly prize, or just publicly promoting the idea of writing such things and making people feel impactful and high-status for doing this sort of thing
So there may also be some good value of information, rather than just the expected impact of having recordings of these particular entries.
This is something I might give some thought to doing. One question is where it should live ā I think the two most obvious options are the Nonlinear Library podcast, or on a new āEA Fictionā podcast feed (advantage of the latter is that it could continue running if it goes well, disadvantage is itās maybe a couple extra hours to set up).
Incidentally, I also think it would be valuable for someone to produce table reads of some of the conversations MIRI recently published.
Please can anyone let me know if you would like to help read or edit something for either this EA fiction thing, or the MIRI conversations? I expect it would be possible to get a mic sent over, or at least compensation for your time.
If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/āor the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), Iām willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesnāt have one already and it costs that much) and $20/āhr for up to 5 times as many hours as the cumulative total run time across all the episodes produced, with the guarantee being capped at $1500 total.
Fine print:
Itās also plausible Iād personally provide a larger amount, and Iād guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (thatād be my preferred starting point, with me as a backup, unless the total amount requested is <$1k in which case I might just provide it right away myself). This is just what Iām willing to personally guarantee right now, without thinking about it further.
Note that EAIF has recently made larger grants for projects that are in some sense smaller, e.g. ~$5k for one relatively short and simple video.
I havenāt checked or thought about how much mics cost; whatās a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or whatās a reasonable hourly rate. Thatās among the reasons itās plausible Iād provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why itās plausible a funder like EAIF would.
Itās probably best if you contact me before you make these things, and maybe do one quick reading with whatever mic you already have so I can confirm that it seems your final version will be high-quality-as-deemed-by-me.
If you havenāt done that, itās possible Iāll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldnāt pay up, and thatād also be uncomfortable and awkward.
In contrast, if you have done that, I might also provide part of the money in advance or something, if necessary.
Iād definitely count as āhigh-qualityā readings as high-quality as Rob Milesā readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. Iād probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldnāt count something thatās only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Libraryās machine reading as high-quality, since then thereās not much point having humans read it.
This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved donāt already get funding elsewhere and if it doesnāt seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
Though itās also plausible Iād top up someoneās compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
Although Iām a guest manager on EAIF, Iām writing this in my personal capacity.
This doesnāt mean Iām confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
There are many other things Iād also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that theyād happen and if the topic came up.
(E.g., Iād probably prefer if Fin doesnāt do this himself unless heād find it engaging enough to not trade off against āregular work hoursā, since I think the opportunity cost of Finās time is quite high)
Great! Both the MIRI conversations and the creative writing pieces amount to a bout an audiobookās worth of content, so I think this would be best if multiple people helped record them. Plus it could be useful to have both male and female voices for some.
I would be happy to project manage either of these things if thereās enough interest!
Iād quite like to help read some of these. I strongly agree that a table read of the MIRI conversations would be good: given their conversational nature I think a lot of people would find them easier to approach as a recording than as a text log.
Also, my impression is that the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant got a lot out of having a nice video version. If the recordings go well it might be worth considering commissioning an accompanying video for the top prize winner at least.
Quick thought: I think it might actually be pretty high impact, and clearly worth the relatively low time/āmoney required, for someone to do pretty good human readings of these and release them as episodes in one podcast feed.
This is based on things like:
how successful Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has been as an outreach tool + my guess that there being a podcast version helped with that
how successful other podcasts (esp. the 80k podcast) seem to have been as an outreach tool + my guess that itās plausible similar could occur with fiction
how much I appreciate having things like the Nonlinear Library + my guess that a nontrivial fraction of other potential high impact EAs who havenāt heard gotten into EA would be the same + my guess that that would generalise to or is even stronger for fiction than for nonfiction
We could instead have machine-read versions. But Iād guess that, for fiction as an outreach tool, human-read versions would be sufficiently more appealing and engaging that itās worth the extra time/āmoney.
(I havenāt tried to verify any of the above, e.g. havenāt checked how many high impact people got into EA/ārationality via the HPMOR podcast as opposed to reading it.)
EDIT: Also, if that seems to go well, it may well be worth following that with:
Recording many/āall of the entries that arenāt mentioned in this post
Doing more to encourage further creative writing like this than weād otherwise do, because now we now we have an additional channel to put it into that may draw people into EA
E.g., this could update us in favour of running another competition sooner, or having a monthly prize, or just publicly promoting the idea of writing such things and making people feel impactful and high-status for doing this sort of thing
So there may also be some good value of information, rather than just the expected impact of having recordings of these particular entries.
This is something I might give some thought to doing. One question is where it should live ā I think the two most obvious options are the Nonlinear Library podcast, or on a new āEA Fictionā podcast feed (advantage of the latter is that it could continue running if it goes well, disadvantage is itās maybe a couple extra hours to set up).
Incidentally, I also think it would be valuable for someone to produce table reads of some of the conversations MIRI recently published.
Please can anyone let me know if you would like to help read or edit something for either this EA fiction thing, or the MIRI conversations? I expect it would be possible to get a mic sent over, or at least compensation for your time.
If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/āor the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), Iām willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesnāt have one already and it costs that much) and $20/āhr for up to 5 times as many hours as the cumulative total run time across all the episodes produced, with the guarantee being capped at $1500 total.
Fine print:
Itās also plausible Iād personally provide a larger amount, and Iād guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (thatād be my preferred starting point, with me as a backup, unless the total amount requested is <$1k in which case I might just provide it right away myself). This is just what Iām willing to personally guarantee right now, without thinking about it further.
Note that EAIF has recently made larger grants for projects that are in some sense smaller, e.g. ~$5k for one relatively short and simple video.
I havenāt checked or thought about how much mics cost; whatās a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or whatās a reasonable hourly rate. Thatās among the reasons itās plausible Iād provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why itās plausible a funder like EAIF would.
Itās probably best if you contact me before you make these things, and maybe do one quick reading with whatever mic you already have so I can confirm that it seems your final version will be high-quality-as-deemed-by-me.
If you havenāt done that, itās possible Iāll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldnāt pay up, and thatād also be uncomfortable and awkward.
In contrast, if you have done that, I might also provide part of the money in advance or something, if necessary.
Iād definitely count as āhigh-qualityā readings as high-quality as Rob Milesā readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. Iād probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldnāt count something thatās only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Libraryās machine reading as high-quality, since then thereās not much point having humans read it.
This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved donāt already get funding elsewhere and if it doesnāt seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
Though itās also plausible Iād top up someoneās compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
Although Iām a guest manager on EAIF, Iām writing this in my personal capacity.
This doesnāt mean Iām confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
There are many other things Iād also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that theyād happen and if the topic came up.
(E.g., Iād probably prefer if Fin doesnāt do this himself unless heād find it engaging enough to not trade off against āregular work hoursā, since I think the opportunity cost of Finās time is quite high)
Great! Both the MIRI conversations and the creative writing pieces amount to a bout an audiobookās worth of content, so I think this would be best if multiple people helped record them. Plus it could be useful to have both male and female voices for some.
I would be happy to project manage either of these things if thereās enough interest!
Iād quite like to help read some of these. I strongly agree that a table read of the MIRI conversations would be good: given their conversational nature I think a lot of people would find them easier to approach as a recording than as a text log.
Also, my impression is that the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant got a lot out of having a nice video version. If the recordings go well it might be worth considering commissioning an accompanying video for the top prize winner at least.