In case itâs useful, hereâs my quoted comment in full:
If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/âor the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), Iâm willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesnât have one already and it costs that much) and $20/âhr 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:
Itâs also plausible Iâd personally provide a larger amount, and Iâd guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (thatâd 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 Iâm 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 havenât checked or thought about how much mics cost; whatâs a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or whatâs a reasonable hourly rate. Thatâs among the reasons itâs plausible Iâd provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why itâs plausible a funder like EAIF would.
Itâs 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 havenât done that, itâs possible Iâll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldnât pay up, and thatâd 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.
Iâd definitely count as âhigh-qualityâ readings as high-quality as Rob Milesâ readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. Iâd probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldnât count something thatâs only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Libraryâs machine reading as high-quality, since then thereâs not much point having humans read it.
This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved donât already get funding elsewhere and if it doesnât seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
Though itâs also plausible Iâd top up someoneâs compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
Although Iâm a guest manager on EAIF, Iâm writing this in my personal capacity.
This doesnât mean Iâm confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
There are many other things Iâd also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that theyâd happen and if the topic came up.
(E.g., Iâd probably prefer if Fin doesnât do this himself unless heâd find it engaging enough to not trade off against âregular work hoursâ, since I think the opportunity cost of Finâs time is quite high)
Michaelâwe have a bunch of the infrastructure in place for this, at least an Airtable system and an Anchor-hosted podcast⊠might be worth linking arms here ⊠with the EA Forum podcast
Iâve listened to a couple episodes of the EA Forum Podcast, and the fact it contains digressions and commentary (by the reader, not just whatâs in the thing being read) makes it seem much less engaging/âuseful for me personally, and means I actually prefer Nonlinear Libraryâs machine-read versions when both podcasts have read the same thing. Iâd guess that many people would feel the same, though I havenât checked that at all. Iâd also guess that that would make the podcast seem more âweirdâ and less âprofessionalâ than if it had no digressions/âcommentary, which seems problematic from an âearly-in-the-funnel outreachâ perspective.
So I personally wouldnât count that approach as âhigh-qualityâ for my purposes/âto my taste.
In other words, it seems to me much better if these creative pieces and/âor the MIRI conversations were:
read without any digressions/âcommentary
in a feed where everything else either also has no digressions/âcommentary or is like a clearly marked âspecial episodeâ where the digressions/âcommentary can be quarantined to (so that people can easily opt out of those eps if theyâre uninterested, and can be confident that in other cases their listening experience will just be straight readings of the content they want)
Iâd weakly guess other EAIF people would feel the same, but thatâs again basically just extrapolating from myself rather than me having checked.
Separate point: I started listening to an episode on a Toby Ord piece yesterday and found the switching of the audio from left to right a bit distracting/âannoying/âunprofessional-seeming, which further contributed to me not finishing that episode.
(This comment is kinda blunt and maybe rude. Apologies for that. It felt like itâd be worthwhile to say anyway, in this context, since this is a context where I want to actively encourage specific activities and am also promising funding for a certain fuzzily specified version of those activities. But I do acknowledge that itâs a bit odd for me to say this in this public way.)
Also, on the Toby Ord episode, Iâve found a way to strip most/âall of my comments from previous episodes. Iâve done this and posted a new version here ⊠(and on all podcatchers).
This is an edited repost of a previous reading (reader David Reinstein); I removed my commentary so you can listen to the full essay uninterrupted.
Let me know what you think I may do this for other prior episodes (remove the comments), if there is interest. Iâm thinking for future readings to save my comments for the end, if at all (maybe still including a few explainers if they donât distract from the flow.) ⊠but if I were to do the MIRI thing I probably wouldnât add any comments or even explainers, as I have little or know expertise there.
The commenting (including clarifications) and the audio switching was all my doing, I think. I donât think any of the other readers did this. I tried to denote these episodes separately. For the Toby Ord episode I had a lot to say and some knowledge in this area and I wanted to get my thoughts out there. So it was a âdifferent sort of thingâ.
For some other readings I commented less, or almost not at all.
The left/âright thing was meant to distinguish between the original text and the comments. Perhaps there is some better way of doing this?
I can definitely see the argument for âreading without commentingâ in many cases, or for putting these separate.
For me it was more like âI want to read and comment on these and I thought that while doing so it would be worth posting themâ.
Anyways the main point is that ea forum podcast could probably handle doing these, at least some of them and we wouldnât add commentary⊠at least if the funding were there I think we could get these done.
Thanks for this post!
In case itâs useful, hereâs my quoted comment in full:
If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/âor the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), Iâm willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesnât have one already and it costs that much) and $20/âhr 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:
Itâs also plausible Iâd personally provide a larger amount, and Iâd guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (thatâd 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 Iâm 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 havenât checked or thought about how much mics cost; whatâs a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or whatâs a reasonable hourly rate. Thatâs among the reasons itâs plausible Iâd provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why itâs plausible a funder like EAIF would.
Itâs 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 havenât done that, itâs possible Iâll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldnât pay up, and thatâd 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.
Iâd definitely count as âhigh-qualityâ readings as high-quality as Rob Milesâ readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. Iâd probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldnât count something thatâs only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Libraryâs machine reading as high-quality, since then thereâs not much point having humans read it.
This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved donât already get funding elsewhere and if it doesnât seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
Though itâs also plausible Iâd top up someoneâs compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
Although Iâm a guest manager on EAIF, Iâm writing this in my personal capacity.
This doesnât mean Iâm confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
There are many other things Iâd also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that theyâd happen and if the topic came up.
(E.g., Iâd probably prefer if Fin doesnât do this himself unless heâd find it engaging enough to not trade off against âregular work hoursâ, since I think the opportunity cost of Finâs time is quite high)
Michaelâwe have a bunch of the infrastructure in place for this, at least an Airtable system and an Anchor-hosted podcast⊠might be worth linking arms here ⊠with the EA Forum podcast
Shared airtable
signup to read or edit form
Iâve listened to a couple episodes of the EA Forum Podcast, and the fact it contains digressions and commentary (by the reader, not just whatâs in the thing being read) makes it seem much less engaging/âuseful for me personally, and means I actually prefer Nonlinear Libraryâs machine-read versions when both podcasts have read the same thing. Iâd guess that many people would feel the same, though I havenât checked that at all. Iâd also guess that that would make the podcast seem more âweirdâ and less âprofessionalâ than if it had no digressions/âcommentary, which seems problematic from an âearly-in-the-funnel outreachâ perspective.
So I personally wouldnât count that approach as âhigh-qualityâ for my purposes/âto my taste.
In other words, it seems to me much better if these creative pieces and/âor the MIRI conversations were:
read without any digressions/âcommentary
in a feed where everything else either also has no digressions/âcommentary or is like a clearly marked âspecial episodeâ where the digressions/âcommentary can be quarantined to (so that people can easily opt out of those eps if theyâre uninterested, and can be confident that in other cases their listening experience will just be straight readings of the content they want)
Iâd weakly guess other EAIF people would feel the same, but thatâs again basically just extrapolating from myself rather than me having checked.
Separate point: I started listening to an episode on a Toby Ord piece yesterday and found the switching of the audio from left to right a bit distracting/âannoying/âunprofessional-seeming, which further contributed to me not finishing that episode.
(This comment is kinda blunt and maybe rude. Apologies for that. It felt like itâd be worthwhile to say anyway, in this context, since this is a context where I want to actively encourage specific activities and am also promising funding for a certain fuzzily specified version of those activities. But I do acknowledge that itâs a bit odd for me to say this in this public way.)
Also, on the Toby Ord episode, Iâve found a way to strip most/âall of my comments from previous episodes. Iâve done this and posted a new version here ⊠(and on all podcatchers).
This is an edited repost of a previous reading (reader David Reinstein); I removed my commentary so you can listen to the full essay uninterrupted.
Let me know what you think I may do this for other prior episodes (remove the comments), if there is interest. Iâm thinking for future readings to save my comments for the end, if at all (maybe still including a few explainers if they donât distract from the flow.) ⊠but if I were to do the MIRI thing I probably wouldnât add any comments or even explainers, as I have little or know expertise there.
The commenting (including clarifications) and the audio switching was all my doing, I think. I donât think any of the other readers did this. I tried to denote these episodes separately. For the Toby Ord episode I had a lot to say and some knowledge in this area and I wanted to get my thoughts out there. So it was a âdifferent sort of thingâ.
For some other readings I commented less, or almost not at all.
The left/âright thing was meant to distinguish between the original text and the comments. Perhaps there is some better way of doing this?
I can definitely see the argument for âreading without commentingâ in many cases, or for putting these separate.
For me it was more like âI want to read and comment on these and I thought that while doing so it would be worth posting themâ.
Anyways the main point is that ea forum podcast could probably handle doing these, at least some of them and we wouldnât add commentary⊠at least if the funding were there I think we could get these done.