Just to be clear, I think marketing spending for a book is pretty reasonable. I think WWOTF was not a very good book, since it was really quite confused about AI Risk and described a methodology that I think basically no one adheres to and as such gave a lot of people a mistaken impression of how the longtermist part of the EA community actually thinks, but I think if I was in Will’s shoes and thought it was a really important book and contribution, I think spending a substantial amount of money on marketing seems pretty reasonable to me.
Just to be clear, I think marketing spending for a book is pretty reasonable. I think WWOTF was not a very good book, since it was really quite confused about AI Risk and described a methodology that I think basically no one adheres to and as such gave a lot of people a mistaken impression of how the longtermist part of the EA community actually thinks, but I think if I was in Will’s shoes and thought it was a really important book and contribution, I think spending a substantial amount of money on marketing seems pretty reasonable to me.