MichaelA🔸 comments on Linch’s Quick takes

[MichaelA🔸]

This also reminds me of a recent shortform by Buck:

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.

[...]

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 think the full shortform and the comments below it are also worth reading.)