Does the Precipice count? And I think Will Macaskill is writing a new book.
But I have the vague sense that public-facing books may be good for academics’ careers anyway. Evidence for this intuition:
(1) Where EA academics have written them, they seem to be more highly cited than a lot of their other publications, so the impact isn’t just “the public” (see Google Scholar pages for Will Macaskill, Toby Ord, Nick Bostrom, Jacy Reese Anthis—and let me know if there are others who have written public-facing books! Peter Singer would count but has no Google Scholar page)
I think The Precipice is good, both directly and as a way to communicate a subsection of EA thought, but EA thought is not predicated on a high probability of existential risk, and the nuance might be lost on readers if The Precipice becomes the default “intro to EA” book.
Does the Precipice count? And I think Will Macaskill is writing a new book.
But I have the vague sense that public-facing books may be good for academics’ careers anyway. Evidence for this intuition:
(1) Where EA academics have written them, they seem to be more highly cited than a lot of their other publications, so the impact isn’t just “the public” (see Google Scholar pages for Will Macaskill, Toby Ord, Nick Bostrom, Jacy Reese Anthis—and let me know if there are others who have written public-facing books! Peter Singer would count but has no Google Scholar page)
(2) this article about the impact of Wikipedia. It’s not about public-facing books but fits into my general sense that “widely viewed summary content by/about academics can influence other academics” https://conference.druid.dk/acc_papers/2862e909vshtezgl6d67z0609i5bk6.pdf
Plus all the usual stuff about high fidelity idea transmission being good.
So yes, more EA books would be good?
I think The Precipice is good, both directly and as a way to communicate a subsection of EA thought, but EA thought is not predicated on a high probability of existential risk, and the nuance might be lost on readers if The Precipice becomes the default “intro to EA” book.